THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 



SAMUEL W PENNYPACRER 






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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
OF 

A PENNSYLVANIAN 




Samuel ^yHITAKER Pennypacker 



THE 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

OF 

A PENNSYLVANIAN 



By 

SAMUEL WHITAKER PENNYPACKER 

Governor oj Pennsylvania 
1903— 1907 




PHILADELPHIA 
THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY 

1918 



Copyright, 1918, by 
THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO. 



Copyright, 1917, 1918, by 
Public {/EDGer Co. 



MAY -6 1918 



7, 



To the Family of the 

Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker 

It is now a matter of public knowledge that the late 
Governor Pennypacker wrote, for publication, an Auto- 
biography. 

Of the existence of this work he had often spoken to 
his friends. 

A fear exists, on the part of the latter, that a desire 
to avoid controversy, or the possible injury to someone's 
feelings may tempt his family to consider having the 
manuscript edited. 

His friends and associates whose signatures are ap- 
pended, feel that they owe it to his family, to the institu- 
tions with which he was connected, and to his memory, to 
urge that this be not done. 

Unaltered, unexpurgated and unedited. Governor 
Pennypacker's Autobiography constitutes an invaluable 
historical document, of increasing public interest, perhaps 
his greatest contribution to the history of the state. And 
it is in the name of the citizens of Pennsylvania, living 
and to come, that we urge his family to print his Auto- 
biography exactly as it was written. 

Marten G. Brumbaugh, Governor of Pennsylvania. 

Thomas L. Montgomery, State Librarian of Pennsylvania. 

Samuel G. Dixon, Commissioner of Health of Pennsylvania. 

Hampton L. Carson, Former Attorney General of Pennsylvania. 

John W. Jordan, Librarian, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 

Gregory B. Keen, Curator, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 

Henry R. Edmunds, President of Board of Education of Phil- 
adelphia. 

Simon Gratz, Vice President, Board of Education of Phila- 
delphia. 

5 



John Frederick Lewis, President, Penna. Academy of the Fine 
Arts. 

George Wharton Pepper, Former Professor of Law, University 
of Pennsylvania; Lyman Beecher Lecturer, Yale University; 
Trustee, University of Pennsylvania. 

Henry Shippen Huidekoper, Lieut. Colonel U. S. Volunteers; 
Major General National Guard of Penna., Retired; Former 
Overseer of Harvard University. 

C. Stuart Patterson, President, Western Savings Fund Society; 
Director, Pennsylvania Railroad Company. 

Charles C. Harrison, Former Provost of University of Penn- 
sylvania. 

Frank P. Prichard, Chancellor of the Law Association of Phil- 
adelphia. 

Edgar F. Smith, Provost of University of Pennsylvania. 

Morris Jastrow, Jr., Librarian of University of Pennsylvania. 

Edward J. Nolan, Recording Secretary and Librarian of The 
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 

Mayer Sulzberger, Formerly a Justice of the Court of Com- 
mon Pleas No. 2 during the Presidency of Gov. Pennypacker 
in that tribunal and later President Judge of said Court. 

3. G. RosENGARTEN, Vicc President, Philobiblon Club of Phil- 
adelphia. 

John Ashhurst, Secretary, Philobiblon Club of Philadelphia. 

December 4t i916. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Ancestry 11 

II. Childhood and Youth 31 

III. Que Faire 71 

IV. The War 80 

V. The Philadelphia Bar 106 

VI. Litterateur and Book-Hunter 136 

VII. Reformer 171 

VIII. Judge 194 

IX. President Judge 228 

X. Governor, 1903 261 

XI. Governor, 1904 330 

XII. Governor, 1905 369 

XIII. Governor, 1906 405 

XIV. Comment and Review 439 

XV. Miniatures 468 

XVI. John B. Pennepacker 499 

Appendix 523 

Index 551 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker Frontispiece 

PAGE 

Isaac Anderson Pennypacker, M.D 22 

Brevet Major General Galusha Pennypacker, 
U. S. A 88 

Page of Quotations from the Governor's Record 
OF His Reading 144 

Page from the Governor's Record of His Reading, 
Showing Total Number of Pages Read in the 
Year 1914 146 

Pennypackers Mills 262 

Group of Governor Pennypacker's Pennsylvania 
Constabulary 380 

Governor Pennypacker in the Executive Chamber, 
Harrisburg 436 



INTRODUCTION 

THE autobiography of Governor Pennypacker was 
written in the last years of his Ufe, during what 
that incessant worker called his summer vacations. 
In 1912 he became a member of the Pennsylvania 
Railroad Commission by appointment of Governor Tener, 
and in 1915 chairman of the Pennsylvania Public Service 
Commission. He requested Governor Brumbaugh, in 1915, 
not to reappoint him to the chairmanship of that body, but 
remained a member of it until his death on September 
2, 1916. 

Public duties and other activities and responsibilities 
necessarily confined the writing of the autobiography to 
brief periods in the summers of some four or five years. 
Late in the summer of 1915 his right arm was broken and, 
while still carried in a shng, was again injured in a railroad 
train. He was never able to use the arm during the year of 
life that remained, but immediately after the injury, at the 
age of seventy-two years, with the courage and resolution 
which always characterized him, he set out to write with 
his left hand. The concluding sentence of his account in 
Chapter XIII of his visit to the battlefields of Fredericks- 
burg and Chancellorsville was the last portion of the auto- 
biography written with the right hand. The remainder of 
Chapter XIII, the pages gf comment and review in 
Chapter XIV, the sketches of Walt Whitman and Elihu 
Root in Chapter XV and the introductory paragraph of 
Chapter XVI were written with the left hand. 

Governor Pennypacker never had opportunity to revise 
the manuscript. He had intended to add two chapters of a 
philosophical nature giving the outcome of his study, experi- 
ence and reflection, one chapter about the law, the other on 

11 



INTRODUCTION 

statecraft. His reading, as shown by the series of note- 
books which he kept from 1863 to 1916, wide in variety and 
scope, embracing science, theology, poetry and American 
and Em-opean history, in sources often not accessible to 
historians, in the French, German, Dutch, Latin, Spanish, 
Enghsh and other languages, his famiharity with the origin 
and development, laws and customs of many peoples, com- 
bined with a rare power of analysis, mental integrity and 
directness of method, no doubt, would have made the 
chapters contemplated rich in fundamental criticism and 
constructive suggestion. Bishop Darlington has portrayed 
him as an ideahst and a radical. If in part and at times he 
was both, as the following pages show, he had also a firm 
faith in the wisdom of holding fast to that which is good. 
Increasing physical weakness and suffering prevented the 
writing of the two additional chapters which he had in 
contemplation. 

When it became known to the public that Governor 
Pennypacker had left an autobiography, a number of 
officials and prominent citizens of Pennsylvania, moved no 
doubt by their knowledge of the untoward fate that has 
overtaken so many similar life records in the hands of 
unhappy editors, united in a letter addressed to his family 
in urgent phrase requesting that the life narrative be pub- 
Ushed exactly as written, "unaltered, unexpurgated and 
unedited." 

Beyond the verification of certain dates, titles, names 
and occasionally a minor incident and the elimination of a 
few references and some repetitions caused by the long inter- 
ruptions to the writing, which would have been done by 
the author himself had not illness and death prevented, 
there has been no such editing of the autobiography as the 
signers of the letter, perhaps, feared might occur. No 
such editing was ever contemplated. 

It will be seen that the analysis is essentially of policies 
and of principles and that the criticism is applied to con- 
12 



INTRODUCTION 

duct growing out of erroneous conceptions, that where it 
seems to be most personal the criticism is based upon some- 
thing broader than personahty and in the main is to be 
implied from a statement of fact, that the abundant praise 
has also an underlying foundation, and that both praise 
and censure are a characteristic application of a persistent 
standard of conduct and in illustration of a principle, of 
physical and moral courage or the opposite, and of ethics 
and the proprieties. At the close of his gubernatorial 
term, and not before, as an expression of his personal good 
will, Governor Pennypacker gave a dinner at the Executive 
Mansion to the newspaper correspondents at Harrisburg. 
The timing of the courtesy was an expression of his sense 
of propriety and an indication of the absence of personal 
feeling in his previous conspicuous effort to bring the pub- 
lication of newspapers into line under the law with all 
other commercial activities. 

In his notable biography of Governor Pennypacker, 
printed in 1917, Hampton L. Carson, Esq., the historian of 
the United States Supreme Court, says of him that he was 
"a great and a good man." Mr. Carson's high standing at 
the bar and as a citizen, his lofty conception of public duty, 
his long acquaintance with the subject of his Memoir, his 
intimate knowledge, acquired as Attorney General of 
Pennsylvania from 1903 to 1907, of Governor Pennypacker's 
motives, plans and acts, give to the words quoted a weight 
which they could derive from no other living source. 

Towards attaining what is hoped to be a correct pre- 
sentation of the autobiography in book form, James L. 
Pennypacker has given much time and indispensable 
assistance. 

Isaac R. Pennypacker. 



13 



THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 



CHAPTER I 

Ancestry 

THE life of every man has a value as well as an 
interest for his fellows. No matter how humble 
may have been the career, if the events are truly 
told they are a source of helpfulness to the race. 

The book of the old gossip, Pepys, has outlasted and 
been oftener reprinted than many another of more apparent 
importance. 

Scientists search with the utmost care for the chips of 
stone which men, long forgotten, threw away as refuse, in 
order that their lost lives may be reconstructed. 

My own life has been somewhat eventful, and in a 
certain sense representative. It presents many antitheses. 
It covers the period of the War of the Rebellion (I decline to 
use the euphuism of the Civil War, no such thing having 
been ever), the destruction of slavery, the centennial anniver- 
saries, the publication of the Origin of Species, the intro- 
duction of electricity into the industries and the discovery 
of the North Pole. I have been brought into relations 
with the presidents, from Lincoln to Roosevelt, with the 
generals. Grant, Sherman, Hancock, Sickles, Howard and 
Sheridan, and have corresponded with Darwin, Le Comte 
de Paris, DeHoop Scheffer, Bayard Taylor and Lloyd 
Mifihn. I have made addresses at Stony Point and at 
Gettysburg. I have presided over the Law Academy, the 
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the University of 
Pennsylvania, a court and the commonwealth. I have 

15 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

walked one hundred and seventy-five miles on a stretch, and 
have ridden down Pennsylvania Avenue, from the capitol 
to the White House, at the head of ten thousand men. I 
have carried on my back at one time twenty pounds of 
putty, and at another a musket. I have made pills in Ken- 
sington, thrown a load of wood into a Chestnut Street cellar, 
kept the books of an oil company, mowed weeds in a 
meadow, gathered a great library, written eighty books and 
pamphlets, tried men for murder, and sent sixty-six criminals 
to be hanged. Therefore is this story begun. 

It pleases the vanity of men who have won some of the 
success of life to beheve that they have been the architects 
of their own fortunes, and that the results are due to their 
individuahties. The thought is pure error. Countless ages 
and almost infinite effort of unrecognized forces are required 
to make a man. His character and his physique he inherits, 
what he accompUshes depends upon the conditions that 
surround him more than upon the weight of his hand or the 
logic of his brain. I became Governor of Pennyslvania 
because one grandfather earned and gave to me the money 
with which to read law, and the other grandfather, in 
obedience to family traditions, took into his home and 
provided for a helpless child. The deeds of virtue, as well 
as the sins of the fathers, are visited upon the children even 
imto the third and fourth generations. Consequently, if 
we wish to understand a man and his work, it is necessary 
to know how he came about and what there is back of him. 

The people of Pennsylvania are more blended in race 
than those of any of the other American colonies. Biologists 
and breeders alike have learned the law of nature that the 
crossing of allied stocks leads to the increase of vital activi- 
ties. To interbreed, or, as it is called, to keep a strain pure 
is to prevent further development. Substantially all of my 
American ancestors were residents of Pennsylvania, save a 
few from New Jersey, and in almost all of my lines they came 
to the country among the earhest settlers. But among them 
16 



ANCESTRY 

were Dutch, English, Germans, Welsh, Swedes, Scotch- 
Irish and French Huguenots, though in the main my blood 
is English. The paternal line is Dutch, and the name 
which originated somewhere in the neighborhood of 
Gorcum, in Holland, is Pannebakker. It means a maker of 
tiles. The earUest trace of the family that I have found 
tells the tale of a man who was burned to death and a wife 
who was drowned for heresy at Utrecht in 1568. In those 
days they were more gentle with the women. The founder 
of the family in Pennsylvania, Hendrick Pannebecker, was 
born March 21, 1674. He was in Germantown in 1699, 
and from there moved out to Skippack in 1702 as the 
attorney for Matthias Van Bebber for the sale of the lands 
of the latter in Bebber's township. He later bought the 
township and became, as well as Van Bebber and Lodowick 
Christian Sprogell, one of the three Dutch patroons of 
Pennsylvania. He was a surveyor and laid out most of the 
early roads in upper Philadelphia, now Montgomery 
County. I have his bill to the Penns for surveying a 
number of their manors in 1733, with the order of Thomas 
Perm for its payment. He understood three languages — 
Dutch, German and EngUsh. He had a library of books. 
He owned seven thousand acres of land. He wrote a very 
pretty script, drew deeds and devised a seal much like that 
of Van Rensselaer in New York. There is a biography of 
him in print and when it turns up at a book sale it brings 
twenty-five dollars. His wife, Eva Umstat, came from 
the lower Rhine and neither the marriage of his son, 
Jacob, who was a miller on the Skippack, nor that of his 
grandson, Matthias, who moved to the Pickering Creek, in 
Chester County, effected any race modifications. This 
Matthias, born in 1742, had rather a broad country life. 
He owned a mill, still standing, and four or five farms. 
He was a commissioner appointed by act of assembly to 
provide for the navigation of the River Schuylkill. He 
was a bishop of the Mennonites, using the three languages 

17 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

of his grandfather and preaching with eloquence and 
strength. He sent several contributions of flour and 
money to the Philadelphia people when the yellow fever 
devasted the city in 1793, as will be seen in the report of 
the committee. It is told of him that people came to 
his funeral from five counties and that he had the largest 
funeral and the longest will up to that time known in the 
county. No better evidence could have been given of his 
consequence. His son, Matthias, my grandfather, born in 
1787, spent his days on the Pickering, owning the same 
mill. He was portly, and, it may, be a little pompous, but 
he had some reason for demanding in manner that those 
around him show respect. ''Rich, respectable and numer- 
ous " was written of the family in his time. In 1826 and 1827 
he was a member of assembly. The organization which 
was effected to bring about the incorporation of the Philadel- 
phia and Reading Railroad Company made him its president, 
and he was one of the incorporators of that road. He 
represented Chester County in the Constitutional Con- 
vention of 1837 which prepared a constitution for the state. 
When the Whig party held their county meetings at 
West Chester, he presided. In his day the traces of the 
old Dutch life almost entirely disappeared. Enghsh alone 
was spoken in the household and his children knew no 
other tongue. The German books which had lost their 
utility were given to a servant. The old German family 
Bible was banished to the springhouse, and there one of his 
boys cut from it all its pictures. 

I remember once in my childhood spending a Christmas 
at the house. Memories of the Peltz Nicol still lingered and 
I hung my stocking beside the stone fireplace, at the end of 
which stood a long wood box, but what was put into it were 
ginger cakes and store candy. There was a large kitchen 
garden in which were grown currants, gooseberries, black 
currants, asparagus, beets, corn, onions, lettuce and even 
strawberries, in beds interspersed with bright -colored 
18 



ANCESTRY 

flowers. Two large box bushes grew in the front yard. In 
the back yard were a burning bush and a fringe tree. There 
was a meadow in front of the house stretching to the Pick- 
ering, and the outlook was to the Valley Hills. There was 
a parlor, a spare room with high -post bedstead, stately and 
chill. Water was brought in pipes to the house from a 
distant spring and ran out of the nozzle of a pipe into a 
trough continuously, which was a great wonder to me who had 
seen nothing like it anjrwhere else, but the water had to be 
carried up a long flight of stone steps to the kitchen. The 
only indication of art in the house were profiles cut at 
Peale's Museum, and, in fact, the desire to have the fea- 
tures of the face preserved was regarded as a vanity to be 
condemned. There was no music, cards were an iniquity 
and there were no devices for other games. The mental 
attitude was stiff and cheerless, but rugged and sincere. 
To be honest and to tell the truth were the virtues in- 
culcated. The letters written were in the main didactic 
and religious, and they tell much about going to meeting 
and hearing sermons. The welfare of the soul was a 
continual subject of contemplation. There was no liquor 
of any kind used during the lives of my great-grandfather, 
grandfather and father save that the housewife would have 
a cut-glass bottle filled with lavender brandy put away on 
the upper shelf of the closet in the spare room, to be ready 
in cases of emergency. 

My grandfather, like his father, was a member of the 
Mennonite meeting at Phoenixville, and he paid the expense 
of having the Dordrecht Confession of Faith of 1632 
reprinted at West Chester. My grandmother was fond of 
reading Pollok's Course of Time. My grandfather, in 
his marriage, doubtless without intending any such result, 
brought about a great change in the race. He courted Sarah 
Anderson, born February 10, 1784, whose parents lived upon 
the opposite side of the Pickering Creek. He gave to her as 
"a, token of my esteem" a little porcelain box with a mirror 

19 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

on the underside of the Hd, which box I still preserve. Her 
father, Isaac Anderson, hunted with the Indians, was a 
justice of the peace, a member of assembly, a presidential 
elector and a member of congress from 1803 to 1807. 
His name heads the list of those in congress who voted for 
the Louisiana Purchase. He served three terms in the 
Revolutionary army before he was eighteen years of age, 
and became an ensign and lieutenant of militia, taking part 
in the fight at the Warren Tavern. His portrait is extant, 
I have it, and he wrote a local history. He was six feet 
four inches in height and his firmness of will was such as to 
give him the reputation of being arbitrary. 

Her grandfather, Patrick Anderson, commanded a com- 
pany in the French and Indian War and for a time the 
Pennsylvania Musketry Battalion in the War of the Revolu- 
tion, participating in the battles of Long Island, Brandy- 
wine and Germantown. He was major of Anthony Wayne's 
Regiment of Chester County Minute-men in 1775. He was 
also for four years a member of the assembly. He has an 
importance in Masonic history, having been master of 
Lodge No. 8 as early as 1760, and is claimed by Mr. Sachse 
to have organized the first lodge in the Continental army. 
It is said that his teeth were double all around, something 
often said of the aged, but rejected by dentists. He 
married three times and, being an Episcopalian, once in 
Christ Church in Philadelphia. Her great-grandfather, 
James Anderson, came from the Isle of Skye, in Scotland. 
I have reason to beheve he could not write his name. His 
services were sold for a fixed term from the ship to Thomas 
Jerman, a noted Quaker preacher, in the Chester Valley, to 
pay for his passage, and he showed a certain canniness by 
running away with and marrying one of Jerman's daughters. 
He was the first settler along the Pickering, where he built 
a log hut beside a spring. When Patrick was born, and the 
mother occasionally trudged across the Valley Hill five miles 
to visit her relatives, an Indian squaw suckled and took 
20 



ANCESTRY 

care of the baby. In this instance, as in many others, the 
Revolutionary War brought to the front a family of native 
vigor which had been theretofore obscure. The blood which 
came with the alHances of the Andersons was that of 
the famines of Jerman (Welsh), Morris (Welsh) and 
Bartholomew (Bartholimi, French Huguenot). 

My grandmother, through her mother, Mary Lane, had 
her part in a great pedigree. The name of Lane occurs in 
Battle Abbey. Edward Lane, to whom William Penn fre- 
quently refers in terms of friendship and to whom he 
entrusted some correspondence to be brought across the 
Atlantic, son of WiUiam Lane of Bristol, England, lived on 
the Perkiomen, where he owned seven thousand five hundred 
acres of land and where he founded St. James' Episcopal 
Church. He married Ann, daughter of Samuel Richardson, 
member of assembly, provincial councillor, judge of the 
Philadelphia court of common pleas and the first alderman 
of that city. Next to Samuel Carpenter, he was the richest 
man there and owned all of the land on the north side of 
Market Street from Second Street to the river. George 
Keith said he was lascivious, but Keith was a very bitter 
partisan with a long tongue. He had only one son, Joseph, 
who also went to the Perkiomen where he bought one 
thousand acres at the junction of that creek and the 
Schuylkill, in a region bearing the Indian name of Olethgo. 
There was another intermarriage. Sarah Richardson, the 
granddaughter of Joseph, married Edward Lane, who had 
fought under Braddock, the grandson of Edward. The 
Friends' Meeting records of Gwynedd say that he had another 
wife, a statement hinting at a long forgotten scandal which 
cannot now be probed. Mary Lane was their daughter. 
When Joseph Richardson married Elizabeth, the daughter 
of John Bevan, in 1696, there was an elaborate settlement 
recorded in Philadelphia in which lands and £200 in money 
were given them by their fathers. John Bevan lived on 
land in Glamorganshire, Wales, which he had inherited 

21 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

from Jestyn ap Gwyrgan in the eleventh century. He dis- 
played a coat of arms showing descent from the royal 
famihes in England and France, the earliest assertion of such 
a right made in America. In Philadelphia he was a mem- 
ber of assembly and a judge of the court of common 
pleas. A contemporary biography says he was "Well 
descended from the ancient Britons." His wife, Barbara 
Aubrey, came from Reginald Aubrey, one of the Norman 
conquerors of Wales, and was nearly related to the William 
Aubrey who married Letitia, daughter of William Penn. 
Elizabeth Bevan, therefore, could prove her descent from 
Edward III, John of Gaunt, Warwick the King Maker, the 
Fair Maid of Kent, the loss of whose garter led to the 
establishment of the ancient order, and many other historical 
characters. The blood of Mary Lane was consequently 
English and Welsh. I have an indistinct recollection of 
her. The Lanes were a short-lived stock, but she reached an 
age of over eighty years. She long suffered from rheumatism, 
which twisted her hands, but she retained her skill in 
needlework and made very pretty silk pincushions. I have 
two of them and her long knit garter. 

My father, Isaac Anderson Pennypacker, was born 
July 15, 1812, on the Pickering. As a youth he worked on 
the farm and in the mill. He went to a country school and 
learned arithmetic as far as cube root, mensuration, algebra, 
trigonometry and surveying. Later he was sent to Bolmar's 
Academy, in West Chester, and there acquired some 
knowledge of French and Latin. Later he studied medicine 
in the office of his uncle. Dr. Isaac Anderson, and at the 
University of Pennsylvania, from which he was graduated in 
1833, writing a thesis upon "Sleep." He was about six 
feet in height, weighed two hundred and twenty pounds 
and was unusually impressive in both feature and figure. 
A daughter of Doctor Dorr, rector of Christ Church in 
Philadelphia, told me that one of the Wetherill women told 
her that once on a visit to the Wetherills, on the Perkiomen, 
22 




Isaac Anderson Pennypacker, M.D. 



ANCESTRY 

she saw him come down the stairs and inquired ''who can 
that handsome young doctor be?" When it came to me 
this story had lasted sixty years. Everybody liked him. 
The women named their boy babies after him. This was 
due to a kindly disposition which led him to take an interest 
in all around him and to endeavor to aid them. Thomas 
Adamson, United States Consul to Panama, the Sandwich 
Islands and Melbourne, Australia, told me that once when 
he was a little boy playing along Nutt's Road, at the 
Corner Stores, my father drove by in a buggy. Seated beside 
him was a dark-browed swarthy man who had come from the 
Valley Forge. My father stopped and called: "Come over 
here, Thomas!" The boy hung his head but went. "I 
want to introduce you to Daniel Webster." Adamson said 
the incident made an impression which affected his whole 
career. My father had a gift of speech and made many 
public addresses — upon education, temperance, medicine 
and politics. He was ambitious. He was a capable physi- 
cian, quick to see and decisive in action. A man met with 
what threatened to be a fatal accident. My father bought 
a big knife in a near store and cut the man's leg off while 
my mother steadied the limb. A boy, fishing, caught the 
hook in his nose and a young physician worried over him 
in vain. My father chanced to come along and with a 
sudden twist jerked the hook out while the boy screamed. 
He bled, and pulled teeth, and prescribed calomel, jalap and 
flowers of sulphur. In my younger days I have seen 
setons, moxas, cups and leeches. He was fond of having 
his hair combed and his skin rubbed. He smoked cigars 
to excess. 

On the 9th of May, 1839, he married Anna Maria 
Whitaker, born March 23, 1815. She had black eyes and 
black hair and as she grew older became stout. Hers was a 
resolute character. Her life was one of devotion to her 
children. Left with four of them under thirteen years of 
age, she took care of them and refused to marry again. 

23 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

To fulfil the duties of life as they came to her was her idea 
of what was required of her, and she never flinched and 
never lamented. What she was unable to buy she cheerfully 
did without, and what she could not secure did not disturb 
her. Her predominant trait was a certain setness. There 
were people she disliked and she never relented. There 
were people of whom she was fond, and no poverty, failure 
or misfortune could weaken her affection for them. She 
was not aggressive, but was immovable. She was timid 
at a distance, but when an emergency arose was calm and 
efl&cient. She never fainted nor grew hysterical, nor became 
''rattled," but simply stayed there and did what could be 
done. I have seen her tried in sudden accident, in cases of 
extreme illness, on an occasion when the upsetting of a 
fluid lamp set fire to the room, and in all of these instances 
alike the same quiet strength of character was manifested. 
Her Irish and negro maids, from the point of view of the 
household training to which she had been accustomed, were 
a sorry lot of incapables, but when they were ill she nursed 
them, mended their clothing, and, in person, attended to 
their wants. In her childhood she lived with her grand- 
mother at the southeast corner of Front and Pine streets, 
in Philadelphia, going to school on Pine Street, and later 
was a pupil in the Kimberton School in Chester County, 
where she learned the prim chirography of that Quaker 
establishment. Up to the end of her long life she could 
read a book and enjoy it all, meet a guest and chat with her 
cheerily, and in her eighty-fourth year she made for me an 
elaborate piece of needlework, so elaborate that a maid 
of eighteen would have abandoned the task. 

Her marriage breakfast was cooked by Juha Roberts, a 
mulatto woman who was raised as a slave in the family of 
my great-great-grandfather, Samuel Lane, and who finally 
died, after I reached manhood, at the age of one hundred 
and four years. Patrick Anderson owned a slave and the 
Richardsons owned slaves. Once I had the bill of sale of a 
24 



ANCESTRY 

slave in Richmond by a master who could not write, and I 
was in the habit of showing it as an illustration of the 
vileness of the system until I also became the possessor of a 
like paper executed by one of my own people along the 
Schuylkill, in which a black girl, Parthenia, in the early day, 
was sold by her mistress and, lo! the mistress could not 
write. Throwing stones at the wickedness of other people 
often leads to complications. Her father, Joseph Whitaker, 
born in 1789, in a one-story log house, in a poor stony region 
near Hopewell Furnace, so near the line between Berks and 
Chester counties that the family could not be quite sure in 
which county they lived, was five feet eight inches in 
height, full-blooded, with thick curly hair, which he never 
lost, and thin chin whiskers but no beard. He was 
sometimes described as a "lit+le big man" and measured 
forty-four inches around the chest without clothing. His 
will power was immense and there were few men who could 
withstand him. He ruled over his household and pretty 
much everybody else who came within his influence. If 
he did not want the women to plant hollyhocks in the 
garden he pulled them up and threw them over the fence. 
In his younger days he kicked a clerk out of the office and 
down the stairs, and when seventy-five years of age he 
applied a whip to some young fellows from the canal who 
exposed themselves naked before women, and he broke his 
cane over the head of a young man who trampled his wheat 
and was impertinent about it. He was careful, but provided 
necessary things bountifully. He was proud and ruggedly 
honest. Through the vicissitudes of a long career in the 
iron business no contract of his was ever broken and no 
note ever went to protest. He loved to play checkers, 
the principles of which he never understood, but his opponent 
either had to stay up all night or lose a game. He never 
learned to swim. Having only such school training as 
came from a few nights spent at a night school, he could 
measure the hay in a barn and keep a set of books. Begin- 

25 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

ning life in extreme poverty, as a charcoal burner and 
wood chopper about an iron furnace, and as a maker of 
nails by hand in a small shop at the corner of Fourth 
Street and Old York Road in Philadelphia, he reached the 
position of one of the principal iron proprietors of Penn- 
sylvania, Maryland and Virginia, took care of a family of 
eleven children, and, dying in 1870, left an estate of 
$520,000. Generous to the extent of his perception of the 
needs of those dependent on him, he bought each of his 
children a ticket to hear Jenny Lind sing, but he never 
overcame the impressions made in his early life, and always 
had a dread lest some of his children or grandchildren 
might drop back into the situation from which he had 
emerged. Once when I as a child was at his house in Mont 
Clare, opposite Phcenixville, he called me to him as he lay 
on a sofa and said: ''Sam, there was once a Httle boy alone 
at a hotel, and when he went to the dinner table he was 
timid and could get nothing to eat. Presently he turned to 
the man next to him and said: 'Please, sir, won't you give 
me a little salt?' The man in surprise inquired: 'What 
do you want with salt?' 'I thought, sir, if I had some 
salt maybe somebody would give me an egg to put it on.' 
With a quizzical expression he continued: 'Now I see that 
you have no watch-fob in your jacket. When you go home 
tell your mother to make a fob in your jacket and maybe 
some time or other somebody may give you a watch.' " 
Even in childhood I always wanted to think out the prob- 
lems for myself, and this suggestion impressed me as pure 
foolishness and I did not mention the matter to my mother. 
The reasoning was correct enough, but, unfortunately, as so 
often happens in more serious affairs, some of the facts were 
unascertained. However the watch came and later he 
advanced the moneys which enabled me to read law. He 
wore a woolen shawl. Probably he would have lived to the 
age of his Brother James, which was ninety-four, but late 
in life he fell from the third story of a house, down an 
26 



ANCESTRY 

unfinished stairway, and though he recovered, the accident 
no doubt shortened his Ufe. In his eighty-second year, one 
day he was in Philadelphia attending to business. He 
came home, and in the evening, as was his wont, lay down 
on a sofa to read a newspaper. The paper slipped from his 
hand. His daughter, who was in the room, went over to 
him and found him dead. 

His father, Joseph Whitaker, named for his grandfather, 
Joseph Musgrave, of the Scottish clan referred to in 
''Young Lochinvar," son of James Whitaker, born in 
Colne in Lancashire, grandson of John, also of Colne, was 
born in Leeds, England, where his father was a manufacturer 
of cloth. The Whitakers of Lancashire are an Anglo- 
Saxon family known at High Whitaker and the Holme 
since the eleventh century and distinguished in literature 
and in the Church. Several of them in remote times were 
inmates of Kirkstall Abbey, still well preserved. Among 
them were William Whitaker, who headed the Reformation 
in England ; Alexander Whitaker, the rector at Jamestown, 
who married Pocahontas to Rolfe; John Whitaker, the 
historian of Manchester, and Thomas Dunham Whitaker, 
who wrote the History of Whalley. 

Attention is called to Joseph Whitaker the elder because, 
while his career was in every sense a failure, he transmitted 
certain dominant traits of character — mental and physical, 
which have left their impress upon all of his many descend- 
ants. His father intended that he should be trained for 
the ministry of the Church of England. His inclinations 
turned toward another line of work. The father was 
determined and the son was resolute. The result was that 
he left his home and enlisted in Colonel Harcourt's Cavalry. 
The regiment was sent to America to suppress the rebellious 
colonists who were fighting in the Army of Washington. He 
participated in a number of engagements and was one of the 
squad which captured General Charles Lee in New Jersey 
in 1776. The tradition is that he became convinced of the 

27 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

merit of the American cause, in which tradition I have little 
faith, but at all events he became weary of the service. 
While the army was on its way from the Head of Elk to 
Philadelphia in the campaign of 1777, he mounted his horse 
and rode away. There was a pursuit and shots were fired, 
but he escaped unhurt and thereafter made his home in a 
hilly region in the northern part of Chester County. He 
had a small farm with a log house upon it, but the ground 
was poor and stony, and the crops, wrested from an unwill- 
ing soil, were scant. He cut wood for the neighboring 
furnaces, but he had not been trained to this kind of labor 
and almost any other wood-chopper could excel him. He 
married Sarah Updegrove and had a family of thirteen 
children. It was a life of hardship in which there was a 
continual struggle to get enough to eat. He did not spare 
the rod. He was earnest in prayer and had a gift in that 
direction. Despite his poverty and his failures, he was 
intensely proud and was able to assert and even to maintain 
a certain sense of superiority in the rural neighborhood 
in which he lived. It is manifest that he had a power of 
will which was not to be over-ridden by conventions or to be 
suppressed by adverse circumstances. He was about five 
feet eight inches in height, his hair inclined to curl, he had 
a red birthmark upon one cheek and a readiness of speech. 
Strange as it seems, his barren and unfruitful life was the 
ground from which were raised the fortunes of a family. 
His wife, Sarah, a worthy woman with a tender heart, was 
the daughter of Jacob, granddaughter of Isaac and great- 
granddaughter of Abraham Op den Graeff, who came to 
Germantown in 1683. He signed the protest against 
slavery in 1688 and is immortahzed by Whittier in his 
poem, The Pennsylvania Pilgrim. He was burgess of 
Germantown and a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly. 
His grandfather, Herman Op den Graeff, was a delegate to 
the Mennonite Convention which met in Dordrecht in 
1632 and there signed the Confession of Faith which 
28 



ANCESTRY 

has often been printed both in Europe and America. 
Abraham later moved to the Skippack. His son, Isaac, 
was employed by the Potts families about their iron works 
at Pine Forge and Colebrookdale, and his grandson, Jacob, 
crossed the Schuylkill River to Chester County, where 
Samuel Nutt was making iron at Coventry in partnership 
with William Branson and Mordecai Lincoln, the great- 
great-grandfather of the President. Jacob Updegrove 
married Sarah, the daughter of Richard Butler. He and 
Butler were both wood-choppers and day laborers around 
these furnaces and forges where the industry which has 
created the prosperity of Pennsylvania began. There is a 
fatality in the preservation of pedigrees as in other things. 
For thirty years I can give the daily details of the incon- 
spicuous and uneventful life of Richard Butler — what ae 
did, what he ate and drank, what he wore. In this 
atmosphere, with such antecedents, my great-grandfather, 
Joseph Whitaker, raised his family. Each of his sons 
heard of the making of iron from his childhood and several 
of them, as they grew older, became iron-masters and made 
fortunes. From him came these physical tendencies: A 
weakness of the stomach, often running into dyspepsia, a 
certain rattle of the nerves and a vital tenacity which over- 
comes all attacks of disease and leads to length of life, 
ending in death from failure of the heart. Along with these 
tendencies came pride, firnmess and a disposition to be 
masterful. It is a remarkable fact, observable down to the 
fifth generation, that individual descendants, who in 
youth show the traits of other forefathers, as they grow 
older, display the mental and physical characteristics of 
Joseph Whitaker. He wears out the stocks of lesser vital 
strength. While it is impossible to speak with confidence 
upon a subject so involved as that of inheritance, it is 
nevertheless my thought that while the convolutions of 
the brain which enabled me to grapple with a difficult 
problem of law while on the Bench, came by way of 

29 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Matthias Pennypacker, the temperament which led me, as 
Governor, to undertake alone the correction of sensational 
journalism, knowing its power to harm, was derived from 
that other ancestor who did not fear to offend both father 
and king. 

My mother, therefore, with the exception of the high- 
land Celtic blood which came from the clan of Musgrave 
and the infusion of Dutch derived from the family of 
Op den Graeff, was of pure Saxon lineage. In the direct 
paternal line my forefathers, though perhaps inclined to be 
a little tame from habit and religious repression, obstinate 
rather than aggressive, were sensible, sober, honest and 
cleanly. For six generations, at least, I am satisfied no one 
of them had ever been inside of a bawdy house or retained a 
cent which did not belong to him. 



30 



CHAPTER II 
Childhood and Youth 

1WAS born April 9, 1843, the second of six children, 
upon a Sunday and, therefore, gifted with the power 
to pow-wow and to see fairies as the opportunity 
arises. The room in which I was born had ten windows 
and was floored with walnut. The house stood upon a 
high bluff, upon the north bank of the French Creek, in 
the town of Phoenixville, and faced the creek which flows 
eastwardly to the Schuylkill, falling over the breast of a 
dam on its way. Connected with the house were about 
five acres of land. Perhaps the most famous bridge builder 
of his day was a German named Lewis Wernwag. He 
had thrown a bridge across the Schuylkill at the Upper 
Ferry, at Callowhill Street in Philadelphia, which had the 
longest span of all the bridges constructed down to that 
time. There is a fine engraving of it reproduced upon a 
set of blue china manufactured in England, now very 
scarce and therefore much in demand. He came to Phoenix- 
ville in the early part of the nineteenth century to conduct 
the iron works there, and built this house, intended for his 
own permanent residence, in a fashion then regarded as 
luxurious and extravagant. The visitor, entering from 
the front, trod upon a stone step and over a wrought iron 
lintel into a hallway. To the right were two rooms with 
folding doors between them used as parlor and sitting-room, 
each of which had an open fireplace with a hand -carved 
hard-wood mantel and mantelpiece around it. To the 
left was the dining-room with a kitchen in the rear. The 
dining-room had likewise a fireplace with stone hearth, 
and higher than the mantel to the right was a large "hole- 

31 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

in-the wall" out of the reach of me as a child, and always 
a subject of mystery. The kitchen had a large stone sink 
and from it ran, the whole length of the yard, a drain of 
carved stone which, covered over with the detritus of time 
and bad housekeeping, had, like an archaeological discovery, 
been found a few years before. On the second story over 
the dining-room was the large room in which I was born, 
and to the eastward was ''the spare-room" and five others. 
The garret contained six chambers. From one small 
room a flight of open steps ran up to a loft and a wooden 
railing enclosed a flat roof. Running the whole front of 
the house was a porch of hewn and huge stones, perhaps 
eight feet long, three feet wide and eight inches thick. 
The ground from the crest down to the creek was terraced 
after the manner of the vineyards along the Rhine by a 
succession of five walls. From a point across the drive 
in front of the house a long flight of stone steps ran all 
of the way down to the creek. I never saw anjrvvhere 
else so much wall and stone work. It had been the inten- 
tion of Wernwag to run an iron railing along the tops of 
these walls, but his resources were exhausted before this 
was accomplished and the walls remained unprotected. 
One of the amusements of the children was to banter each 
other to jump from one wall to the other above the flight 
of descending steps, where to have fallen would have meant 
destruction, and every once in a while one of them fell 
from a wall into the garden below, perhaps twenty feet. 
Before Wernwag was able to complete his designs the 
War of 1812 threw the business of the country into con- 
fusion and his efforts in connection with the making of 
iron ended in failure. He went to Harper's Ferry in Virginia 
where the Duke of Saxe-Weimar found him about 1830, 
and where he died in poverty. There are still some traces 
of him around Phoenixville. At Moore Hall my brother, 
Henry C, has his clock. At Pennypacker's Mills I have 
his hickory chair. The stone bridge built by him over 
32 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

the Pickering creek at Moore Hall is as firm as ever. His 
house and grounds have been torn down and asunder 
by a railroad, but at ''The Knoll," now owned by Colonel 
Paul S. Reeves, he built for Judge Benjamin Morris, a 
counterpart of the house, save that he put the better work 
and material into his own house, a preference in those 
days not unusual. Built into the corner of the barn on the 
Robinson place in Upper Providence township, across the 
road from Phcenixville, is a block of iron conspicuous in 
contrast with the stone which encloses it. When Wernwag 
failed he owed the Robinson, then living, a considerable 
sum of money; all that the creditor could get was this 
block of iron which he permanently preserved, and he 
secured some satisfaction in frequently teUing how much 
it had cost him. 

As a baby, I had the colic and was more than ordinarily 
troublesome. My earliest recollection is of an event almost 
a tragedy. At a tenant house, belonging to my father, a 
short distance from the mansion, and still standing, masons 
were at work. John, my older brother, and I hung over 
the wall watching them. Presently John fell, struck upon 
the corner of a stone and was carried home unconscious 
with a deep gash in his forehead. I was then about three 
years old, and the mental impression made by seeing him 
supported in a chair with the blood running down his cheek 
is still distinct. 

At four years of age I began school. Even earlier my 
mother had taught me to read. William S. Dare, a super- 
intendent or boss at the iron works, lived in the Starr 
farm-house, and one of his relatives, a Mrs. Heilig, opened 
a school for boys and girls in the house. Lib Schroeder, 
a girl employed by my mother, who afterward married 
and named her oldest boy for me, took me by the hand 
and led me over the high foot-bridge, which then crossed 
the creek, to the school. My few memories of it are con- 
fined to three or four girls, to the stool in the center of 
3 33 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

the room with the paper cap for the "fool" who failed in 
his lesson, and the roof of the spring-house down which 
we sUd at recess. A stream of water then ran, from ''Frog 
Hollow," by the spring-house, through a green meadow to 
the French Creek. All are long gone and Starr Street is 
filled in over them. At this time my head was covered 
with light curls twisted into shape over her finger each 
morning by "Aunt Sallie," an invalid sister of my mother. 
When they were cut away two were preserved. My earliest 
playmate was a boy of my age named Loved Hathaway, 
a son of the tenant in the house where the accident to my 
brother, John, occurred. Ere long the Hathaways moved 
to the far West. At their sale my playmate's grandmother, 
"Granny Blake," gave me a large hammer which I have 
used through my whole life and remains my oldest possession. 
One of my very early recollections pictures to me Bayard 
Taylor. To me he was not a poet, but a companion. My 
father owned a flat-bottomed boat on the French Creek, 
and often Taylor, taking me with him, would row in it 
up the creek for perhaps a mile beneath the willows which 
grew along the banks. From these willows I soon learned 
to make whistles, when the sap was running. Taylor had 
just returned from Europe and wanting something to do 
thought of starting a newspaper. My father had another 
and much larger stone tenant house at the extreme east 
end of his tract near Main Street and almost upon the site 
where Moses Coates, the first settler in the town, had lived 
in his time. In it were a family named Allen, fallen scions 
of the family of the Colonial Chief Justice Wilham Allen, 
powerful in their day but who lost their hold at the time of 
the Revolution. With them was a very aged relative, 
Elizabeth Oakman, a young woman at the period of that 
war, who gave to my father the key of the trunk Nathaniel 
Allen brought from Europe, and made for him with finest 
needlework a shirt which remains to represent the art of 
the women of the colonies. My father persuaded Taylor 
34 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

to come to Phoenixville and open a printing office in this 
house and loaned him money to assist. The first outcome 
of the office was an advertisement of the miUinery estab- 
Hshment of a Mrs. Strembeck. He published a weekly 
newspaper called The Phcenixville Pioneer, far above the 
heads of the community, in which appeared many of his 
effusions and comments upon local events. Young, vigorous 
and full of vitality, he climbed out along the dam-breast 
in the midst of a freshet and plunged into the waters surging 
below. Somebody had discovered the uses of ether as an 
anaesthetic, and the subject was much discussed by my 
father and other physicians. Taylor determined to inhale 
the drug as an experiment. I well remember the excited 
way in which he flung himself around the sitting-room. 
He told a tale of adventure, very wonderful to me, of having 
been once robbed, tied to a tree with his hands behind him 
and abandoned, in California, and how he managed to 
twist through the cords, getting them in front where he 
could use his teeth. Here was a hero come to the very 
hearthstone, and the awe of the listening boy may be easily 
imagined. The earliest portrait of him extant, a drawing 
in black and white, in 1847, by P. Thramer, with a poem 
in autograph underneath, he gave to my father, as well 
as a daguerreotype taken by "the Buckeye Blacksmith." 
I have likewise the only complete file of the Phoenixville 
Pioneer, a number of autograph poems and a series of his 
letters. 

More vivid by far than that of Taylor is the mental 
image of the dog ''Jerry," a household pet of more than 
ordinary intelligence. He regularly went to the post-office 
for the mail. He carried a basket to the market and brought 
home the things bought. He would hunt a glove hidden 
in a closet in the house and never cease from his efforts 
until it was secured. When he died he was buried below 
a great rock in the field, and for long afterward there was 
many a pilgrimage to Jerry's grave. In the same field, 

35 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

but on the crest of the hill near the present depot of the 
Schuylkill Valley Railroad Company stood a tall, narrow 
stone which marked the site of the wigwam of ''Old Skye," 
the last of the Delaware Indians to live in the neighborhood. 

The home discipline established by my father, a wise 
and kindly man, whom I revered, was most excellent. 
He never whipped me. When I stripped the bark from a 
cherry tree, very like George Washington of old, he gave 
me some tools and sent me out to restore it to its place. 
When I broke one of the stones of a wall with my hammer, 
I was kept busy for an hour or two trying to put it together. 
When my brother John and I disobediently remained 
away at our play until after night had fallen, and in great 
trepidation sought the house, we found the doors locked 
and the lights out. In other words, the treatment was of a 
kind to teach a child the law of cause and effect, and there 
was a continual effort to reach the processes of childish 
thought. When a circus or Signor Blitz, a noted conjiu-er 
and ventriloquist, with his manikin "Bobby," came to 
the town, or a lecture was delivered by some long-haired 
wanderer from New England, in the squat brick building 
called the "Temperance Hall," we were always taken. 
The former were delights, but many a time I was in misery 
trying to keep awake over the lecture. When Signor 
Blitz appeared, all around the low building gathered the 
town urchins trying to get a peep through the crevices of 
the wooden shutters, and the scene generally ended in my 
father, who was ever generous, making a bargain with the 
manager to let them in at wholesale rates. On one occasion 
we went to Ullman's Hotel and paid ten cents a piece to 
see a Chinaman, then on exhibition, as a rara avis. 

There was not a novel in the house. The nearest thing 
to it was a copy of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, which I 
devoured for the story, utterly regardless of the allegory. 
The Fables of iEsop I learned by heart. When I was about 
eight years of age a young woman, dressy and bright, whose 
36 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

name perhaps I never knew, came to the house. She was a 
granddaughter of Henry Rhoades, an old Mennonite, who 
had a farm adjoining. He was a stern man; he had the 
reputation of being a hard man. When his child died, he 
said in grief that he would rather have lost the best cow on 
his place. My recollections of him are all kindly. When I 
caught a partridge once he gave me a peck of oats to feed 
it and refused my money. The first time that I ate preserved 
quinces, they came from him as a present. His grand- 
daughter ran away and became a circus actress. There 
was no sense that such conduct was disgraceful but a feeling 
that it was wicked. She did not dare to go home, and she 
left a box of things which was put into our garret to be kept 
for her. Rummaging in the box, I found a paper covered 
copy of Lewis Arundel. The book opened out vistas before 
me, and today I could repeat the story of the proud young 
man who went as a tutor, fought the poachers and remained 
to marry. In a Geography of the World I found detailed 
an adventure of Audubon in the wilds of the West; in a 
Universal History there was a description of the Haschischins 
(assassins) of India; in Sartain's Magazine I found an Indian 
story called "Hard Scrabble;" in the Whig Review, beside 
the biographies of the politicians of the day and the poems 
of Poe, there was told of ''Jack Long, or Lynch Law and 
Vengeance, " and along with these I satisfied my craving for 
romantic narrative by reading of John Smith, Hernan 
Cortes, Henry Hudson, Putnam's Ride at Horseneck, 
Marion and Sergeant Champ. Somewhere I found a copy 
of Montgomery Bird's Nick of the Woods which I still regard 
as the most meritorious of the tales of Indian warfare. 
Nothing in the shape of literature came amiss and before I 
was eleven I had read an elaborate Natural History, Whit- 
aker on Arianism, Dick's Sidereal Heavens and Guizot's 
Washington. 

The games I played were tag, hop-scotch, ball, marbles 
— in "fun," in "earnest" which meant "for keeps," and 

37 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

"knucks." Mumble- the-peg, jackstones, shindy, and 
once a year when, in the spring, the Sunday-school had a 
picnic in the woods, ''Copenhagen" and ''drop the hand- 
kerchief." The counting out rhymes I learned were: 

"Ala mala tipsy tee, 
Teela tila dominee, 
Ocka pocha dominocha. 
Hi pon tus." 

And another: 

"Inty, minty, cuty corn, 
Apple seed and briar thorn, 
Briar, briar limber lock 
Three geese in a flock 
One, two, three. 
Out goes she 

With a rotten dish clout, out". 

Marbles, which came along regularly with the relenting 
of the frost, had a vocabulary all its own. "Fen dubs," 
"Fen puds" and "Hist man lay you and the nigger" were 
among the phrases. Often it happens that the most impor- 
tant of possessions are found among the refuse as the dust 
man of Dickens illustrated. The manure pile is the most 
valuable asset of the farmer. From the Kjoldien Moddings 
of Denmark and the shell-heaps of Florida the cast-off 
rubbish of former people we gather what we know of those 
ages. There was an obscene word in common use among 
the boys which I am satisfied had a long and interesting 
history. It must have been in use ages ago and been pre- 
served for thousands of years by the utterance of boys. 
The word carries us back to the goddess of love among our 
Norse ancestors when they worshiped Thor and Woden in 
the woods along the Baltic Sea. 

When things were presented to us we said "Saddy, " a 
word whose origin I have never been able to discover. One 
of the oaths of the urchins was "by Jingo," who appears to 
38 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

have been a deity of those black-eyed little people who 
inhabited Europe before the inroads of the Celts and whose 
only remnants are the Basques of the Pyrenees. 

My father bought for us children a box of white dominoes. 
They were a great source of enjoyment, but we quarreled 
over them and were warned. We quarreled again. He 
called us from the dining-room to the sitting-room, where he 
sat at a high desk given to him by his father, put the dom- 
inoes into the box, threw them into the fire and sent us away 
to repent. Afterward the box was found slightly charred 
on a shelf in a tall closet set into the end of the fireplace. 
These were his methods of discipline. It illustrates the 
tenacity of memory when I say that the ''double three" 
had a slight defect in the ivory on the back. 

My father drove two horses. The stableman, Tim 
McGlone, painted a checker-board, and with black and 
white bone buttons from old breeches taught me to play. 
I had a knack for it and soon beat him. Dr. J. Warren 
Royer of the Trappe, still living at a great age, came to 
consult my father about a case and saw me playing. He 
was an adept. The Royers of the Trappe were given to all 
kinds of games. He took nine men and won easily from my 
twelve. We played more and ere long he needed ten, then 
eleven, and finally twelve, and lost with them all. In the 
village Dr. David Euen had a drug store and here Dr. Isaac 
Z. Coffman and others congregated to talk politics and play 
.checkers. One day there was great astonishment when a 
boy of ten walked in, threw down the gauge of combat and 
carried off all the honors. About the same time Dr. David 
F. Anderson, who was reading medicine with my father, 
made a set of wooden chessmen and taught me to play 
chess. 

Sarah Ann Radcliffe came to the house and made our 
clothes. When we were done with them they were cut into 
strips, sewed together, rolled into hard balls weighing about 
three pounds each and sent to Munshower to be woven into 

39 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

rag carpet. I often helped at each stage of the process. 
Quilting parties had not yet gone out of vogue. The quilt 
was stretched on a frame, the design marked out with chalk, 
and then the women gathered around. Stockings and 
mittens were still knit of woolen yarn with long steel needles. 
I learned to knit. Coal came to the house in huge lumps 
which were broken to a suitable size with an axe or sledge. 
From the stove in the sitting-room a pipe ran up through 
the large room above and furnished the only heat. We 
made and used tallow candles and later used lard oil, whale 
oil and burning fluid. 

The fare was simple and substantial. We had breakfast 
at seven, dinner at twelve, and supper at six. It was not 
usual to put fruit on the table. I never saw a banana in 
my childhood, and when, long afterward, I ate one for the 
first time, did not like it. Oranges were reserved for Christ- 
mas and festal occasions. There was nothing to drink but 
water, milk, tea, and coffee. The last was not good for chil- 
dren and was kept from them. White sugar came in the shape 
of a tall cone, called a loaf, and was broken into lumps with a 
knife and flat iron. Coffee was bought raw and roasted 
over the kitchen fire. Behind the same fire we were washed 
and soaped every Saturday night. Mush and milk was a 
customary dish and made me very tired. Two hogs were 
killed in the winter and we had fried mush, fried scrapple, 
fried sausage, fried ham, fried eggs and fried potatoes — 
not French fried or by any other namby-pamby modern 
method, but fried with fat — and I am fond of them all today. 
The abomination called baker's bread was unknown. We 
had roast turkey for Christmas and New Year's Day, and 
once in a while a roast pig. We were taught to say "Sir" 
and *' Ma'am" to elderly people and to be silent in their 
presence. On Sunday afternoons we went to Sunday- 
school, and for five verses of Scripture committed to memory 
received a blue ticket ; for five blue tickets a red ticket, and 
for a hundred red tickets a Bible, but no confectionery. 
40 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

Flat white mint sticks, flat white cream sticks, rock candy 
or crystaUized sugar around a thread, and round sticks of 
lemon and of sassafras in red and white, and sour balls could 
be bought and were called candy, but chocolate had not yet 
appeared. Occasionally, in summer, a man named Kirchner 
who lived miles away in Vincent, would come in a wagon 
ringing a bell, and offering a luxury called ice cream, always 
flavored with vanilla. On the crest of Tunnel Hill, so called 
because through it the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad 
Company had constructed a long tunnel, in an adapted barn, 
lived an old woman named ''Granny Stevens, " who beguiled 
the children inside by displaying, in the window, glass jars, 
half a dozen in number, containing attractively colored sticks 
of candy. It was she who gave us our first knowledge of 
cocoanut, cut into small strips and sweetened with molasses, 
an amazing delicacy. When we strayed into the shop of 
another woman named Holt, she fiercely denounced our 
ingratitude. The money ordinarily circulated consisted of 
copper pennies, "fips" (five-penny bits), "levies" (eleven- 
penny bits), quarters and dollars, the last four being Spanish 
or Mexican currency, generally worn to a smooth surface. 

Very early in life I began to wander. In Rhoades' 
woods along the French Creek could be found in the spring 
the hepatica, the anemone, the spring beauty, the saxi- 
frage, the American spice wood, the sassafras and the 
slippery elm. At Black Rock, a bluff along the Schuylkill, 
more than a mile away, grew the columbine. Alone I 
strayed through the woods, getting a quiet and unanalyzed 
enjoyment from the beauties of form and color, while learning 
to seek the taste of the spice and the sassafras and to avoid 
that of the smartweed and the Indian turnip. In the fall, 
rising at daybreak, I always gathered, hulled, dried and 
put away in the loft a store of walnuts and such butternuts 
and shellbarks as could be secured. When my younger 
brother, Henry C, was three years old and I was seven, he 
had a dangerous attack of fever and I did harm by dropping 

41 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

a bag of walnuts which I was lugging up the steps from the 
garret to the loft. I learned to skate on a pair of skates 
which cost fifty cents at Samuel Moses' store, and made 
great progress forward and backward and in cutting rings 
on the ice by throwing one foot across the other. There- 
upon a generous uncle, Joseph R. Whitaker, gave me a 
handsome and expensive pair of skates bought in Philadel- 
phia, but the metal was soft. I could not discard them, 
and I never skated so well afterward. We made sleds with 
the staves of rejected barrels, and when a painted sled came 
from the city with iron on the runners, it was a wonder and 
I was envied by all of the boys. In the summer we went to 
the ''Gut," which ran between an island in the French 
Creek and the main land, to swim. It was the fashion to go 
barefoot, and the boy who did not was rather despised as a 
weakling. I hid my shoes and stockings behind an oak 
tree and followed the flock. Along the bank of the creek 
it went well enough with a little care, but when we crossed 
a field of wheat stubble, there was a boy in trouble. On an 
occasion when playing 'Hickly benders" on the thin ice of 
the canal, the ice gave way and I fell into the water and was 
wetted from head to foot. Scrambling out, I went to the 
furnaces of the Chester County Iron Works, stripped off my 
clothes and danced about naked in front of a furnace until 
they were dried. At home the mishap was not reported. 

When very young I was frequently ill and had sores 
around my mouth. I was dosed with flowers of sulphur 
mixed in molasses, with Husband's sulphate of magnesia, 
recommended as tasteless, with jalap mixed in currant 
jelly to make it palatable, and occasionally with castor 
oil. With the measles I had a high fever and in one night 
was bled three times, the cicatrices remaining upon my 
arms. 

Common sense is as important a quality in nursing as 
in all the other affairs of life. If some one of my attendants 
had been wise enough to remove the parti-colored counter- 
42 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

pane from the bed, it would have meant much. These 
colors coiled up into serpents. How important is the 
soothing voice of a motherly woman! Aunt Ann, the 
wife of my uncle, James Pennypacker, herself a Penny- 
packer, and one of the sweetest-souled women who ever 
lived, gathered me into her arms, crooned over me with 
soft song, succeeded in putting me to sleep and perhaps 
saved me. When I was eight years of age my brother, 
John, died at the age of eleven. He was an intelligent 
boy who had read much and was doing mensuration and 
bookkeeping. The event had one permanent effect upon 
me. I had been in the habit of using profanity and then 
determined to cease. I grew accustomed to expressing 
feeling without expletives and have never since upon any 
occasion given utterance to them. About the same time, 
during a time of excitement over the temperance question, 
I signed perhaps twenty pledges, carried around by the 
children, never to use any intoxicating liquor. This, too, 
became a habit unbroken until I was thirty-five years of 
age, but which finally yielded to the dinner customs of the 
city. 

While not robust, I must have been endowed with 
vitality, because energy was always exhibited, and the 
obstacles to which many children yielded were not sufficient 
to deter me from doing what I had undertaken. I planted 
the peas in the garden and my mother depended upon me 
to gather the pods. My father brought to me from my 
Grandfather Pennypacker a cabbage plant and I watered 
it every night. He brought me later four chickens and 
at the end of the second summer I had over two hundred, 
let no nest escape me, and gathered the eggs. I found my 
way to a seemingly inaccessible tree, which bore black 
cherries, by getting on to the rail of a pale fence, clambering 
into another tree, one of whose limbs crossed over from 
the tree I wanted to reach and then by following this natural 
bridge. 

43 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

When what was called the hen fever, a wild speculation 
in fancy chickens spread over the country, an. uncle, George 
W. Whitaker, paid twenty dollars for a dozen Shanghai 
eggs and, not knowing what to do with them, gave them 
to me. Four chickens were hatched. As they grew, their 
enormous size and feathered legs were an astonishing thing. 
As the fever abated I sold the eggs for two dollars a 
dozen. 

Every fruit tree and nut tree within a mile, with its 
comparative merit and the way to reach its store, was 
known to me. I raised broods of white rabbits. 

The school kept by Mrs. Heilig had only a brief existence, 
and I was then sent to the public school in a stone building 
since converted into dwellings upon Tunnel Hill. Among 
the teachers were John Sherman, who made of me a pet, 
and a man named English. It was a rough experience. 
The vacant lot adjoining was called ^'Bullies' Acre" and 
on it the toughs of the town settled their personal con- 
troversies. The pupils were the sons of the Irish work- 
men, who puddled iron and drove carts about the mills, 
and they were divided into two factions — the "Clinkers" 
and the "Bleeders," who fought pitched battles with each 
other, with stones and other missiles. I belonged to the 
"Bleeders." I fought three fist fights with a stocky boy 
named John Bradley, and I think had rather the worst of it, 
though, officially, the battles were decided to be a draw. 
Years later, I gave him a license to sell Hquor in Philadelphia. 
More than one of these boys in later life went to prison 
and others have won substantial successes. Among them 
were Mickey McQuade, Johnnie McCullogh, Barney Green, 
the Sullivans and the Mullins, among whom the last two 
famihes reached respectable social standing. Green had 
a pretty sister, Annie, with a taste for vocal music, who 
became a teacher and married in Chicago. Tunnel Hill 
was naturally the prettiest part of the town, being on the 
high ground between the French Creek and the Schuylkill 
44 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

River. When the village was small, a butcher from near 
Kimberton, named John Vanderslice, bought it as a farm. 
He was hard, coarse and selfish. On it he built little houses 
and sold them to the laborers for such cash as they could 
pay, taking mortgages for the balance. Every few years 
the iron trade became dull and the mills closed. Then 
he foreclosed the mortgages. When trade revived, he 
sold the houses to another set of Irishmen. By repeating 
the process he grew rich. His boys went barefoot and 
worked at day labor. His wife and daughters did the 
washing. He made a trip around the world and left them 
at home. He paid the expense of printing a book of his 
travels, mainly the names of the towns and the dates when 
he reached them. Before he died, not trusting the regard 
of those around him, he bought a monument and had it 
properly inscribed and erected in the cemetery. It was 
among the sons of the tenants and purchasers from John 
Vanderslice that I was now thrown into daily companion- 
ship. It did me no harm, but on the contrary was beneficial. 
Every child is helped by playing for a part of the day in 
the mud. Every man ought to increase his experiences 
and grow to the extent of his capabilities, but he ought 
ever to have his feet upon the ground. Those people on 
Tunnel Hill had great regard for my father, and they have 
always been staunch friends of mine. When I was a candi- 
date for the governorship. Tunnel Hill, for the first time 
in its history, voted with the Republicans, and an old 
Irish woman living there still keeps the cradle in which 
I was rocked. 

At this school I learned all of the rules of Smith's Gram- 
mar, and I find firmly imbedded in my mind the proposi- 
tions that "a noun is the name of a person, place or thing," 
"a pronoun is a word used instead of a noun," "preposi- 
tions govern the objective case," "active transitive verbs 
govern the objective case," and the like. I committed to 
memory the geography of the world from Mitchell's Atlas 

45 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

and could not be overcome by Cape Severo Vostochnoi* 
or the Yang-tse-Kiang River. On one occasion, when 
there was an examination and none of the boys except 
myself appeared, I gave, before an audience, the bounds 
of each of the United States, named its capital, two principal 
towns and two principal rivers. I learned to cipher in 
Vogdes' Arithmetic as far as cube root. Among the bright- 
est boys in the school were John H. Mullen, who after- 
ward studied medicine, and Andrew J. Sullivan, a hunchback. 
Among the pupils about this period were some Indian 
boys and girls. A tribe came from Canada and encamped 
along the Pickering Creek in Schuylkill township, and 
there the boys, who were very skilful, shot with bows and 
arrows at a dime fixed in a pole, and the girls made very 
neat baskets. When the weather grew too cold for tent 
life they rented a house on Tunnel Hill, and both boys 
and girls came to school. 

At ten years of age I went to school in the Presbyterian 
church, on the south side of the creek, to a Miss Agnes 
McClure, who afterward married a clerk named Hughes 
in the office of the iron company, and became the mother 
of Dr. William E. Hughes of Philadelphia, and to a Mrs. 
Wallace, and there made a beginning in the study of French. 

When I was about four years of age the ''Buckeye 
Blacksmith" came to the town. It had just been dis- 
covered that the sun could be made to paint portraits, and 
the common people, who could not afford to employ an 
artist with brush and canvas, might yet hope to have their 
features preserved for the enlightenment of posterity. 
Daguerre had added a new complication to life, if not a 
terror, and out of it has arisen the modern photograph 
and the possibility of all of the ugly pictures with which 
the newspaper destroys our ideas of art. The "Buckeye 
Blacksmith " was one of the most effective of stump orators. 
In a rough and homely fashion he blended wit and pathos. 

* Now called Cape Chelyuakin, the northernmost point of Siberia. 

46 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

Any crowd would desert Webster or Seward to hear him, 
and he took part in all of the political campaigns upon 
the side of the Whigs. Between times he made daguerreo- 
types. My brother, John, and myself had "our likenesses 
taken" by him and the picture was reproduced over the 
country in 1903. His name was J. W. Baer and his memoirs 
have been printed. On the north side of a street, running 
from the Fountain Inn, the furthest inland point reached 
by the British army during the Revolution, to Gordon's 
Ford, where Cornwallis crossed the Schuylkill on the way 
to Philadelphia in 1777, stood and stands the Mansion 
House, a village tavern. The hostler was ''Nigger Hen," 
a mulatto, with whom, as boys, we played as with the rest. 
The tavern was owned by a man of Irish descent named 
Major McVeagh. He was illiterate but shrewd, and as a 
Democrat took his part in the affairs of the town. One 
of his near relatives, Peter Henry, drove a cart. His wife 
was a most worthy woman, named Lincoln, one of the 
family from which Abraham Lincoln was descended. He 
had three sons, all of whom were gifted with native intelli- 
gence, and he sought to give them names which would reflect 
importance — Nathan T., Isaac Wayne, named for the son 
of the General when he was running for the governorship, 
and Benjamin Franldin. The villagers always upheld 
that Nathan was the ablest of the family, but being the 
oldest he inherited the tavern and wasted his energies 
over and inside the bar. Wayne later became Attorney 
General of the United States in the Cabinet of Garfield, 
and Franklin, Secretary of the Treasury of the United 
States in the Cabinet of Taft. Wayne never was a favorite. 
He had the reputation as a boy of getting others into scrapes 
and keeping out of them himself. He had a certain volatility 
and instability of character, combined with acuteness which 
qualified the value of an otherwise important career. He 
inherited with his Irish blood not the gifts of logic or con- 
structive capacity, but a caustic quickness and oratorical 

47 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

fervor quite unusual. Recognizing the nascent ability of 
the youth, my father invited him to his house and encouraged 
him to go to college. On his return from Yale, a homely 
and scrawny stripling, wearing a white necktie, he dis- 
cussed in public in the Temperance Hall, with my father, 
the imposing but rather abstract question suggested by 
reading Locke, "Are ideas innate?" I listened, knowing 
as little as they did what it was all about and wishing I were 
in bed. Nathan and Franklin were both held by the villagers 
in more affection, if less admiration, than Wayne. 

My father, being the most influential person in his 
section of the county, took an interest and active part in 
public affairs and at his home he entertained many persons 
of distinction and notoriety who chanced to come to the 
neighborhood. Like all other Whigs, he was enthusiastic 
over Henry Clay and the fortunes of that eloquent, magnetic 
and compromising statesman. In the greatest and most 
disappointing of his contests in 1844, on the third of October, 
there was a tumultuous gathering of the Whigs at Valley 
Forge, and that night and the next day Daniel Webster 
was the guest of my father. 

Among several letters written to my father by Clay, 
the following comment upon that campaign is of interest: 

Ashland, 28th November, 1844. 
Dear Sir: 

I received and thank you for your friendly letter communicating 
some of the causes which occasioned the recent most unexpected 
defeat of the Whigs in Pennsylvania. They are curious as matters 
of history; but I apprehend there is no present remedy. 

I am grateful for the good opinion of me which prompts you 
to desire my return to the National Councils; but I have no 
intention of doing so. My desire is to pass the remnant of my 
days in private life. Grateful to my ardent and faithful friends, 
I shall never cease to cherish the warmest affection for them, 
and, in my private station, to co-operate with them in advancing 
the happiness and prosperity of our country. 

I am, truly, your friend and obedient servant, 
Isaac A. Pennypacker, Esq. H. Clay. 

48 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

At a later period he invited Mr. Webster to visit again 
his home, to which the Senator replied : 

Washington, July 1st, 1852. 
Isaac A. Pennypacker, Esq., 

Phcenixville, Penna. 
My dear Sir: 

I am quite obliged to you for your very friendly letter, for 
the cordial sentiments which it contains, and the hospitaUty which 
you proffer me. I shall hardly be able to visit Pennsylvania this 
season, otherwise it would give me great satisfaction to visit the 
section of country in which you reside, and witness the improve- 
ments that are in progress around you. 
With great regard, 

Very truly yours, 

Daniel Webster. 

There were likewise visits from people in other lines of 
life. Signor Blitz, the conjurer, gave a private exhibition 
of his skill, in the sitting-room, in the presence of my father 
and mother, of us amazed children, and a medical student 
or two. He took a silver dollar, marked it so that it might 
be recognized and placed it on his knee as he sat on a chair. 
Over the dollar he then put a kid glove; after a slight 
manipulation, the glove was lifted and the dollar had 
disappeared. One of the party pointed out by Blitz found 
it in his vest pocket. Of course the diJSiculty of such per- 
formances was increased by the absence of implements. 

Charles H. Stratton, ''Tom Thumb," on exhibition 
by Barnum, came to the house, was carried to the roof 
and told us in a feeble voice with sprightly manner the 
details of his kindly treatment by Queen Victoria, whom 
he had lately visited. The dress invented for women by 
Miss Bloomer began to attract attention and lead to dis- 
cussion. One afternoon my Aunt Gertrude K. Whitaker, 
then a young lady, and her cousin, Mary A. Bavis, came 
to the house on a sort of an escapade dressed in short skirts 
and baggy breeches, but the recollection I have is made 

4 49 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

up more of astonishment than of either shape or color of 
costume. 

Governor William F. Johnson was a visitor. He offended 
my mother by coming to the house late at night somewhat 
exliilarated, and he had to be put to bed and kept out of 
sight until the next morning. 

Neal Dow, the author of the Maine Liquor Law, and 
afterward a brigadier-general in the War of the Rebellion 
and a prisoner in Libby Prison, made a proselyting tour 
in the cause of temperance, and found my father earnestly 
in sympathy. He was no doubt abstemious in the use 
of wine, but he drank five or six cups of tea at a meal. 
Nevertheless he lived to be ninety-four years of age. When 
I was a very little child, I found in the garden a white 
flint of unusual shape and took it to my father, who explained 
to me that it was an Indian arrow head. Ever since I have 
collected Indian implements and taught others to do the 
like. My father took me with Dow in his carriage to 
Valley Forge. While clambering over the entrenchments, 
then rough and overgrown, I picked up an arrow head 
which had been thrown up by the Revolutionary soldiers 
and washed out by later storms. It was surely an inter- 
esting memento, and in a child's way I presented it to Dow. 
He made a to-do over it and wrote an account of the matter 
for a newspaper in Boston. He always remembered m^e, 
but called me "Tommy." 

American House, 
Troy, N. Y., January 31/54. 
Dr. Pennypacker. 

Dear Sir: — I have just received yours of the 23rd forwarded 
from Portland, and am very much obliged. It would have given 
me great pleasure to have seen you at Philadelphia, for my visit 
at your house and my trip with you to the memorable scene of 
our fathers' trials and sufferings at Valley Forge, are among the 
pleasant memories of my life. Please present my regards to your 
wife, and give my love to Tommy, whom I remember with 
pleasure. 
50 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

It must be a sacrifice to you all, to change your pleasant 
location at Phcenixville for a residence in Philadelphia, but I hope 
it will prove satisfactory to you. When I get home I will see what 
I can do about giving your College a favorable notice in the 
Maine papers, and may have an opportunity to recommend 
some students to your care and instruction. 
I go from here to Montreal, then home. 

Very respectfully yours, 

Neal Dow. 

William H. Seward had pleasant relations with my 
father and spent a few nights at om* home. He was thin, 
with a countenance the lines of which were somewhat drawn, 
reserved and unsympathetic and made little impression 
except for smoking a great quantity of cigars. From 
among his letters I select the following brief note : 

Washington, December 25, 1852. 
Dear Sir: 

I regret that all my copies of the eulogies on Mr. Clay were 
exhausted a month and more ago. I have requested my friend, 
Mr. Schoolcraft, of this State to send you one. I will try to 
save a copy of the Webster Obituary notices for you, but I shall 
be obliged if you will remind me of it after the publication appears. 
Pray offer my most respectful regards to Mrs. Pennypacker 
and believe me, Always faithfully, 

Your friend, 

William H. Seward. 
Dr. I. A. Pennypacker, 

Phcenixville, Pa. 

Being an earnest Whig, my father had little sympathy 
with the Abolitionists, whom he blamed for causing the 
defeat of Clay by nominating Birney for the presidency, 
and when such of their associates as Miller McKim and 
Charles C. Burleigh appeared he wrestled with them in 
public controversies, some of which were published in the 
journals of the time. He was likewise the first to advocate 
making a public park of the camp ground of Valley Forge. 
The village of Phcenixville grew up around the iron works 

51 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

owned by my grandfather, Joseph Whitaker, and his 
partners, Benjamin and David Reeves, composing the 
firm of Reeves & Whitaker, and managed by him very 
successfully from 1829 to 1847. It was a dirty town. 
The streets were unpaved and were cut into deep ruts by 
the huge six-horse teams which hauled the iron ore from 
the Chester Springs to the w^orks, made up of pig iron 
furnaces, puddling mills and a nail factory. The side- 
walks were made of black cinder. Dogs and pigs wandered 
about at their will. There was no authority to check 
the disorders of a somewhat rough community. In 1847 
my grandfather withdrew from the firm and built a hand- 
some residence upon the opposite side of the Schuylkill 
River in Montgomery County, to which Bayard Taylor 
gave the name of Mont Clare. Thereupon my father 
undertook to get the town incorporated into a borough. 
The effort led to a bitter local contest. The firm, now 
Reeves, Buck & Co., were opposed because it meant 
increased taxation and a certain loss of control, and they 
had the aid of all of their employees, who composed the 
greater part of the male population. Meetings were held, 
pro and con, for which Bayard Taylor printed the hand- 
bills. Heated speeches were made and violent letters 
were written. Before one legislature the effort failed, but 
the next granted a charter, and in 1849 the borough of 
PhcBnixville started upon its career, with my father, who, 
after a spirited contest between the friends and opponents 
of the movement, had been successful in the election, as 
its first burgess. Public service is very often an unsatis- 
factory proceeding accompanied by ingratitude and followed 
by discomfort. To pay for the charter and expenses, he 
gave his individual note, which the town council, at the 
suggestion of Vanderslice, declined to provide for, and he 
was compelled to meet it himself. I preserve the paper 
as a memento. As burgess he was soon confronted with a 
situation out of the ordinary. 
52 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

Two bruisers, Bradley and Sloan, anticipating the 
modern achievements of the negro Johnson, representing 
the two cities of Philadelphia and Baltimore, came to 
town, followed by the plugs who were financially interested, 
and fought a prize fight on the grounds of Nathan Penny- 
packer to the north of the borough. By baffling movements 
in different directions they succeeded in finishing their 
fight, but were afterward very properly thrown into jail. 

Taylor, in 1847, went away to New York to be an 
eaitor upon the New York Tribune. From among his 
numerous letters to my father I select the following as an 
indication of their relations and as having a local interest: 

Tribune Office, Sept. 14, 1850. 
Dear Doctor: 

I was more gratified than you would perhaps imagine, on 
receiving your kind letter, a day or two ago. I did not suppose 
you had forgotten me, but I was afraid you might have thought 
me estranged by the years which have elapsed since I left Phcenix- 
ville. Your words brought all the old time back, and I half 
fancied I was looking down the Schuylkill Valley from your 
avenue of cedars, or pulling up the dam in our capacious 
"Sankanac". 

It is true I have lived through a great deal since then, the 
smallest half of my life seems to lie behind that time, so deep and 
varied have been the experiences of these latter years. My duties 
have vastly increased, and with them, my individual responsi- 
bility; but I fancy I have grown stronger by intercourse with the 
world, and am ready to fight its toughest battles. 

You may readily imagine how exacting is the task of editing 
a daily journal, on so large a scale as ours, and that my times of 
leisure are indeed far between. The theft of a day, now and 
then, which is about the extent of my absence, I consider it my 
duty to spend at home — my Chester Coimty home, of course. 

Even my trip to CaUfornia, harum-scarum as it may seem, 
was but one department of my business. The fact is, I am one of 
the galley-slaves of the Press, and can only take comfort in the 
thought that my fellow-laborers in the office are congenial minds, 
and that the harmony of our intercourse is never disturbed. 
In a few years, when I shall become a little freer in money matters, 

53 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

and not obliged to work quite so hard, my situation will be all 
that I could wish. 

I had already noticed in the West Chester papers the death 
of your little daughter. It must have been a severe blow. 
Though I am not married (as you seem to suspect), and, of course, 
have been spared any such sad experience, I can truly imderstand 
and sympathize with it. I hope, however, your fine little boys are 
as strong and hearty as when I last saw them. John must be 
grouTi out of my knowledge, and as for the young Henry Clay, 
I can only conjecture his features. I do not expect any of them 
would recognize me, for my friends tell me I have changed 
considerably m appearance. 

Why do you never visit New York? It would be an easy matter 
to come here for a week or two during our concert and opera 
season, and you have never yet fairly seen our great American 
metropolis. I have seen and heard a great deal of Jenny Lind 
since she came. She is all that has been said and more. 

I must close. I write this at my office desk in the midst of 
business. I must not forget to say, however, that in a few weeks 
I expect to complete the redemption of the note held by Moses, 
and so release you of the only remaining responsibility. Foster 
has acted even worse than I anticipated after my experience of 
him. He is now editing an old Hunker paper in western New York. 

With kindest regards to Mrs. Pennypacker, Dr. Whitaker and 
your father-in-law's family, I am. 

Faithfully yours, 

Bayard Taylor. 

Among his other correspondents were Thaddeus Stevens, 
Josiah Randall, Dr. Joseph Carson, Dr. George B. Wood, 
Joseph R. Ingersoll, and Watson, the annalist. 

When I was about ten years of age I took part in a 
local dramatic performance in the Temperance Hall, given 
by the ''Youths' Improvement Society" and made my 
first public appearance. 

About this time there came a great change in the lives 
and fortunes of the family as I have heretofore depicted 
them. The addresses made by my father — professional, 
political and didactic — had drawn attention to him beyond 
the immediate neighborhood. Among other things, he 
54 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

was, as I have already written, the first to urge publicly 
the preservation of the camp ground of Valley Forge by the 
nation or state, as a park. His reputation as a physician 
extended widely. At this time the Philadelphia College 
of Medicine was about to be reorganized. Among its 
professors were Doctors Henry Hartshorne, James L. 
Tyson, Joseph Parrish and B. Howard Rand. One of them, 
Dr. Henry Geiger, who afterward went into the wholesale 
grocery business and street railways and became very 
wealthy, came to Phoenixville and urged my father to take 
the leading chair of Theory and Practice. He concluded 
to make the venture. His PhcBnixville house was rented 
to David Reeves, the iron master, and in 1854 the family, 
which then consisted of my father and mother, my brothers, 
Henry C. and Isaac R., aged eight and two years respec- 
tively, and myself, aged eleven, moved to the city and 
boarded with John J. Phillips and his wife, old-fashioned 
Quaker people, on the south side of Wood Street between 
Seventh and Eighth. I had only been in Philadelphia 
once before and it meant to me a confused noise, fruit stands 
at the corners of the streets, and advertising signs which 
read in one way from a certain point, but mysteriously 
changed to something else as you passed them. I had 
only one acquaintance in the town, James Henry Workman, 
a boy about my own age, who was later a member of the 
shipping firm of Workman & Co., on Walnut Street, and 
a captain in Rush's Lancers during the war, grievously 
wounded and a prisoner. Boarding in the house, however, 
were two of my cousins considerably older than myself, 
Edmund L. Whitaker and Nelson E. Whitaker, the latter 
of whom is now president of the Whitaker Iron Company 
of Wheeling, West Virginia, has been a state senator and 
urged for the United States Senate. They were sons of 
my great-uncle, George P. Whitaker, who lived at Principio 
Furnace in Maryland, and who, in partnership with my 
grandfather, owned that furnace and a tract of about twelve 

55 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

thousand acres of land, being the most extensive land- 
holders in the state. He was rich, intensely proud, with 
a will of iron hidden beneath a bearing of soft courtliness. 
It was a delight to me as a child and young man to visit 
at Principio, as I frequently did. The boating, fishing 
and gunning about the head of the Chesapeake Bay and 
the streams flowing into it and the warm hospitality of 
the home with its plentiful larder, were attractive, and 
Aunt Eliza, a good-hearted motherly woman, always found 
something in the store associated with the iron works 
to give to me. In their lives his family presented sharp 
contrasts and many vicissitudes. The successful career 
of his son, Nelson, has been mentioned. His daughter, 
Caroline, a beautiful girl who sang sweetly ''A little boy 
went out to shoot one day," married Joseph Coudon, a 
wealthy representative of the Cecil County aristocracy 
and a grandson of one of the early rectors of the Episcopal 
Church who bore the same name. One son, Henry, while 
driving at night fell out of a buggy and his neck was broken. 
Cecil, the youngest son, started one day to cross the Chesa- 
peake with somie companions in a boat, in the face of a 
fierce storm. That they had a desperate experience of 
some character was proved by the fact that the bodies 
of all of them were found, one here and one there, as the 
boat had been driven on in its course. 

The life on Wood Street was very monotonous and almost 
painful to a boy accustomed to the country. However, the 
volunteer fire department was then at the height of its 
development. The Fairmount Engine Company and the 
Shiffler Hose Company, representing up-town and the 
Protestant faith with a touch of Whig politics, and the 
Moyamensing Hose Company with the redoubtable ''Billy" 
McMullen, whom I afterwards came to know, representing 
down-town, the Roman Catholic Church and the Demo- 
cratic party, often met for a fierce street fight. If a fire was 
needed in order to give them a chance, willing hands were 
56 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

ready to start it and there were fires every day. Around the 
corner, not a square away from us, was the house of the 
Empire Hook and Ladder Company. When a fire occurred 
the State House bell with the strokes one, two, three and 
four, for the points of the compass, with their combinations, 
told the direction, and frantic men in their stiff hats and red 
shirts shouted as they ran out the long ladders and hurried 
away. 

In the fall of 1854 my father bought a four-story brick 
house on the north side of Chestnut Street, the second door 
west of Eighteenth Street, and there began practice as well 
as attending to the duties of the college. The house which 
cost him about ten thousand dollars has since sold for a 
hundred thousand dollars, thus justifying his financial 
judgment, although, as often happens, the crop was not 
gathered by him who sowed the seed. He furnished it 
handsomely and fitted up an oflace in the front basement. 
He was popular in Philadelphia as he had been at home. 
He went to the Wistar parties of the day and gave parties 
at his home to the students, professors and others. He was 
one of the founders of the Philadelphia City Institute, 
which has since grown to great importance, and its presi- 
dent, and likewise of the Howard Hospital. A publisher 
named Wilson made an engraving of him which he sold to 
the public. Root, the most skilful daguerreotypist of the 
time, made several daguerreotypes and had two portraits 
made in crayon, one of which he retained to exhibit in his 
store. On the opposite side of the street, in a large double 
brownstone house, lived Robert Truitt, then very wealthy, 
but the house has since passed into the ownership of 
McCreary, the coal man, father of George D. McCreary, 
member of Congress Next door, also in a brownstone 
house, hved the Balls, and they had the steps ornamented 
with two large carved stone balls Both families were 
among his patients. S. Henry Norris, a hopeful young 
lawyer, recently married, lived opposite, on very friendly 

57 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

terms. A few doors away, on our side of the street, lived a 
widow named Thomson, who had a parrot and to whom 
William B. Reed was then paying devoted attention. 
Edwin Greble had a marble yard to the eastward of Eight- 
eenth Street and much of that square was without buildings. 
On the north side a baker named Wernwag, a nephew of the 
famous bridge builder, had his shop. 

Madame Rush, the leader of Philadelphia society, 
distantly related to us through the Richardsons, old, large 
and gross in appearance, daily waddled down Chestnut 
Street in the afternoon for a walk. She was ever the subject 
of gossip, of attention and of envy. 

I was sent to the Northwest Grammar School, then 
under charge of Aaron B. Ivins, as principal, who, later, for 
many years was at the head of the Friends' Central School at 
Fifteenth and Race streets, and every morning Snyder B. 
Simes, a boy whose father had a drug store at Eighteenth 
and Market streets, and who for many late years has been 
rector of Gloria Dei or Old Swedes' Church, and myself 
trudged together to school with our leather satchels swung 
over our backs. Aaron Ivins — nobody ever thought of 
calling him Mr., as he was a Quaker — was a stout man with 
a twist to his mouth on one side who enforced a rigid disci- 
pline with an "Hour Line" of delinquents compelled to 
stand in a row for that length of time after school, and some- 
times also with a window bar. He had an abnormal com- 
mand of figures. He would set down on the blackboard, 
say, 9347698 and multiply it mentally by 6987 without 
apparently the least effort, much to the wonderment of all 
who saw him. It was his pride that he sent more boys to 
the high school every year than any other principal in the 
city and that no one of them had ever been rejected. The 
school was divided into five divisions of two classes each. 
Every three months there were written examinations. I 
was admitted into the first class of the fifth or lowest 
division, but was almost at once advanced to the second 
58 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

class of the fourth division. Being ambitious to excel, I 
arose in the early mornings before daylight to work at my 
lessons. At the fu'st regular examination, along with two 
other boys, I skipped a class and entered the second class of 
the third division. At the next examination one boy went 
with me over the first class into the second class of the 
second division. Three months later I went alone into the 
first division. In nine months I had gone almost from one 
end of the school to the other and my heart was gleeful when 
called to march across the front of the school room to my 
new place and Aaron said aloud: "Boys, you remember 
when he was away down there, don't you?" 

About this time Professor E. D. Saunders had established 
his West Philadelphia Institute, on what was then almost a 
farm, on Thirty-ninth Street a short distance above Market 
Street. He wanted to make it distinctively a school for 
education in French, and that language he required to be 
spoken in the school and on the playground. A native 
of Switzerland, Monsieur Subit, taught the boys. Professor 
Saunders, anxious to try the experiment to ascertain what 
length of time would be required under his methods to 
acquire a famiharity with the language — it may be for the 
purpose of advertising the school — went to Aaron in the 
search for a boy with some capabilities. Aaron recom- 
mended me. He then went to my father and offered to 
educate me free of charge. My father consented and so it 
happened that my course toward the high school came 
abruptly to an end. In the fall of 1855, at the age of twelve, 
I began my studies at the West Philadelphia Institute. 
Among the boys were Courtland Saunders, son of the 
Professor, who afterward, as captain in the Corn Exchange 
Regiment, was killed at Shepherdstown ; Gregory B. Keen, 
who, while a rector of the Protestant Episcopal Church, went 
over to the CathoUcs, became Librarian of the University of 
Pennsylvania, and of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; 
Alfred Driver, now a lawyer in Philadelphia; John E. Rey- 

59 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

burn, not contemporary with me, now the mayor of the city, 
and Edward C. Loud, son of the maker of pianos, then in 
reduced circumstances, who walked out with me in the 
mornings over Market Street bridge, and who had a military 
record, afterward reaching the rank of a brigadier general 
in the National Guard. I acquired a pronunciation of the 
French, upon which I have been complimented since in 
Paris, and have been reading some French every year of 
my life; and, strange to say, established among the boys a 
great reputation as a shindy player. We played the game 
in a field of about twelve acres of land which was adjacent 
to the school. In selecting sides, a boy named Bick- 
nell, about eighteen years old, was chosen first, because 
of the strength with which he could give the opening blow 
to the ball. The second choice usually fell upon me. I 
was known as a '' picker." I had a heavy crooked tree limb 
and earned my standing by the reckless abandon with which 
I rushed into a mel^e and thwarted the other side in its 
efforts to strike the ball. To Professor Saunders I proved 
to be a disappointment, due to two unavoidable causes — 
an attack of malaria interrupted my studies and I went to 
the Durham Iron Works in Bucks County, one of the oldest 
and most noted of the iron furnaces of Pennsylvania, which, 
with a tract of nine hundred and thirty acres of land, 
belonged to my grandfather and my uncles, and there, at 
the house of my uncle, George W. Whitaker, the manager 
in charge, spent some time. There my uncle, Joseph R. 
Whitaker, who was a skilled horseman and had a swift 
sorrel horse, taught me, as well as a couple of young ladies, 
to ride horseback. The furnace stood among wooded hills 
beside a creek flowing into the Delaware River, and not 
far away could be seen the famous Durham Cave, two or 
three of whose limestone chambers were still intact. 

A few months later, on the 13th of February, 1856, my 
father died from an attack of erysipelas and typhoid fever. 
He was attended by Drs. Tyson and Brinckle. There were 
60 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

poems written and editorial regrets. Dr. Clark preached a 
sermon in the Baptist Church, called The Tabernacle, on 
Chestnut Street west of Eighteenth, and Dr. Roach another 
in St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church, upon the 
untoward event. Dr. Hartshorne delivered a memorial 
address to the classes, in which he said: "To this school 
especially he gave all his great mental energies with the 
pride of a founder, which, in a certain sense, as it now stands, 
he was; it seems to us now like an edifice whose foremost 
column has fallen down or a tree whose topmost bough is 
broken off." 

There were sales of his interest in the college, which 
soon afterward became blended with the Pennsylvania 
College of Medicine and later with the Jefferson Medical 
College; of his house in Phoenixville to John Vanderslice 
for one-half of its value; of the house on Chestnut Street 
and of my mother's farm in Chester County, and when they 
were all over, she had just seven thousand dollars upon which 
to depend. She had four children, of whom I was the 
oldest, and my brother, James, had been born only in Decem- 
ber. She had character, met the situation with courage 
and fortitude, took her family to the home of her father at 
Mont Clare and there kept house for him. 

The house, capacious and impressive, built of stone, 
plastered outside, with a porch in front, approached by a flight 
of marble steps and another in the rear, with massive doors 
and high ceilings, a large and unusual parlor, partly separated 
by Doric columns, and a wide hall running from porch to porch, 
stood on a crest sloping toward the Schuylldll. It had, 
however, a basement kitchen and dining-room, and perhaps 
from this cause my mother became a prey to rheumatism, 
suffering with it for thirty years. With the death of my 
father came to me an abrupt change not only in the manner 
of Hfe but in those influences which affect the currents of 
thought. Up to that time my life had been that of a Penny- 
packer and the career which had been proposed for me, and 

61 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

accepted with no sense of uncertainty, was that I should 
pursue a course at college and then read law. The Whitaker 
point of view was thoroughly practical. My grandfather 
had large means, but to provide gratification for idle and 
unproductive people was no part of his philosophy. In 
truth, even thus early in life I felt a great sense of responsi- 
bility and the need which had come to me to be up and doing. 
My mother came to me with her confidences and to a great 
extent began to lean upon me. She continued to do so 
through the whole of her long life and we were not there- 
after for any length of time separated. Temporarily I went 
to the public school in Phoenixville on the south side of the 
creek in a yellow building at the corner of Church and Gay 
streets, the teacher being Joseph Addison Thomson, one of 
a local family, all of whom possess more than ordinary 
intelligence. Both boys and girls attended the school. 
We sang geography. We had spelhng bees and spelled 
each other down. One of the duties of every teacher at 
that day was to write a head line on each page of each 
scholar's copy book, which he or she endeavored to imitate 
for the acquisition of good chirography. I remember on 
one occasion writing in my book, as a venture of my own, the 
line: 

"An Austrian army awfully arrayed," 

and being surprised to find that the next copy given me by 
Thomson was the following line : 

"Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade." 

About this period an unusual and interesting series of 
events occurred at Mont Clare. To understand them there 
need be added nothing more to the description of the house 
than to say that from the center of the hall a narrow entry 
led to the top of the stairway to the kitchen. In this entry, 
near the ceiling and far out of reach, hung the door bell from 
the front door. On the other side of the entry a crooked 
62 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

stairway, used by the servants, ran to the third story. The 
occupants of the house were my grandfather, who was often 
away upon business; my grandmother; my two aunts, EUza- 
beth and Gertrude, then unmarried; my mother and her 
children ; my Aunt Sarah, whose illness prevented her from 
leaving the upper floor; Patrick Orr, a stableman; Fanny, a 
very black girl of about twelve years of age, whom Aunt 
Salhe daily and diligently tried to wash white and comb 
straight ; and two girls in the kitchen. Across the road which 
ran by to Norristown lived ''Auntie Jacobs," a nice old 
Quaker lady with her two old bachelor sons — John and 
Benjamin. Prior to the Revolution the Jacobs family had 
been one of the most influential families of the Province, 
having their part in every important movement, but the 
lapse of time had lessened the nervous force and energy. 
John and Benjamin lived on the ancestral acres, cleanly and 
upright, full of anti-slavery traditions, a little given to 
science and chess, a little prone to adopt all of the advanced 
notions that came floating along, and without much of the 
vigor which leads to achievement. At Rochester, in New 
York, spirits had disclosed themselves to some women by 
rapping in mysterious ways and moving tables and chairs. 
Why they should so behave no one could explain, though the 
subject was talked about all over the country. John and 
Benjamin Jacobs came across the road to sit with my aunts 
about a round table with the hands of all four on the top of 
it, in an effort to get it to move, and listening for the raps 
which ought naturally in sequence to follow. After a few 
weeks of unresponsive endeavor the thing started with a 
vengeance in such a way as not only to discommode the 
family and make them uneasy but to disturb the neighbor- 
hood. The happenings always occurred at night. The 
bells rang long and loudly when there were no visitors, 
rappings were heard all over the house and there were tap- 
pings on the window panes, both up and down stairs. 
Blows were struck upon the doors as though with a club. 

63 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Oftentimes the sounds seemed to be made in the very- 
presence of those who were watching. On one occasion Pat 
stood with a club at the back door, with the door ajar, when 
a loud thump happened at his side. ''Bejabers, I've got ye 
now!" said Pat as he threw the door wide open. Darkness 
there and nothing more! On another occasion Fanny and 
I had our heads out of a third-story window on the watch 
when a loud noise in another part of the house startled all in 
it and called us there. One evening, a member of the family 
coming up the stairs stumbled over a large gilt mirror of 
great weight which had hung for years in a room in the third 
story. Another night the wife of my uncle, Wilham P. C. 
Whitaker, then on a visit to the household, going up the 
broad stairway in the dark, was confronted by some obscure 
figure and fainted. Naturally the members of the family 
thought that somebody in the neighborhood played these 
pranks, and their suspicion fell upon a woman who occasion- 
ally came to the house and knew its arrangement. Every 
effort was made to catch this person in the act. Flour was 
sprinkled over the porches so that traces of the footsteps 
would be left. John and Benjamin Jacobs hid behind the 
shrubbery on the lawn and waited for hours. Relays were 
stationed at the upper windows. It was labor in vain. The 
manifestations continued at intervals for perhaps three 
months and then ceased temporarily. After about three 
months they began again to be followed by a period of quiet 
and by a third recurrence, altogether covering over a year's 
time. Outside of the house and near to it stood a frame 
structure used for the purpose of storing wood and as a 
receptacle for cast-off material. On a dark night a member 
of the family going to this house found a lot of wood gathered 
together with paper, and dry chips underneath, and the 
black girl, Fanny, with a box of matches in the very act of 
setting it on fire. The secret was out and she told her 
story. She had rung the door bell by running up the narrow 
back stairway and pulling out a brass stair rod which 
64 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

enabled her to reach the bell. She had various devices to 
produce the rappings. She had a supply of tinder under 
the carpet of the stairway ready to set the mansion on fire, 
if successful with the outer structure. She was hurried 
away in order to have her escape the severe thrashing which 
grandfather would surely have given her had he been at 
home, and the house thereafter had no more communications 
from the spirits. She was such a dull, thick-witted, stupid 
little creature that a consensus of opinion, based upon 
Imowledge of her and recollection of occurrences which 
apparently she could not possibly have produced, attributed 
outside assistance to her. 

One morning my Uncle Joseph, a bachelor, masterful, 
brusque, generous and rich, upon whom had devolved much 
of the direction of our future, came to me and said : 

''Sam, you are now old enough to get to work; what do 
you want to do?" 

I knew well enough what I wanted to do, but it 
seemed to be beyond the range of possibility and of what 
was within that range I had not the sHghtest idea, and so I 
rather feebly answered : 

"I should like to do as you do." 

"Humph!" he said. "My fortune is made and yours is 
yet to be found." 

Dr. Benjamin S. Anderson, a first cousin of my father, 
with whom he had read medicine, and with whose father 
mine had read medicine, had recently purchased a drug 
store at the southwest corner of Frankford Road and Wood 
Street, in Kensington, Philadelphia. He wanted a boy. 
I went to him upon an agreement that I should receive my 
board with thirty dollars for the first year and fifty dollars 
for the second year. My services began in the summer of 
1857. His wife, also somewhat related to me, though 
more distantly, never approved of his leaving his practice 
to start a drug store, and she displayed her disapproval by 
refusing to fit up the house. In my room a basin and 
5 65 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

pitcher stood on a washstand; there were a bed and two 
chairs, but no other furniture and no carpet. I opened the 
store at six o'clock in the morning and swept it out and my 
hours ended at half after ten at night, when the store was 
closed, except on Saturday night, when they were extended 
to half after eleven. We sold glass as well as drugs, cut- 
ting it to the required size with a diamond, and mixed 
paints and varnishes. I learned the business, even to put- 
ting up the prescriptions of the doctors. Hydrarg. Chlor. 
Mit. is firmly fixed in my mind and the information there 
acquired has proven to be of value to me through my 
whole life. 

Quinine cost seven dollars an ounce; arsenic, bought at 
the rate of ten cents a pound, was sold by the grain at the 
rate of two dollars per ounce. I cleaned the bottles. I 
furnished the transportation for the supplies secured at 
the wholesale stores of Ziegler & Smith, at the corner of 
Second and Green streets, and John M. Colhns, on Fifth 
Street above Market, and often I carried home twenty 
pounds of putty. Generally I rode with the driver of the 
omnibus, a lumbering affair with two horses, and with steps 
leading up to the door in the rear. A strap fastened to the 
leg of the driver gave the signal to stop. About this time 
the first railway cars drawn by horses were started on Fifth 
and Sixth streets and were regarded as very wonderful. 

On one occasion I went to the cellar at night with a 
fluid lamp to mix some paint for a customer, and while I 
was busy at my task the lamp exploded and the flame ran 
around. I well knew the danger. The cellar was full of 
paint, varnish and hay which came around the glass. I 
pulled the fragments of the lamp away, threw them behind 
me and succeeded in putting out the fire in front, burning my 
hands considerably. Then, on turning around, I found that 
I had thrown the lamp into a pile of hay and the fire was 
spreading over the cellar. That disturbed me and I called 
for help. The kitchen girl came to the top of the stairs 
66 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

and, seeing the trouble, concluded it was safer to stay where 
she stood. It was a closed cellar with no means of exit save 
by a narrow stairway. I succeeded in fighting the fire, 
finally got it stamped out, and saved the house. 

A door opened from the rear of the store into the dining- 
room and another door from the dining-room into the 
kitchen. One afternoon I was tending the store, the girl in 
the dining-room was cleaning off the table, while the baby 
lay in the cradle beside her, and on the stove in the kitchen 
the doctor was trying a dubious experiment in the way of 
boiling some varnish to reduce its consistency. Suddenly 
the girl threw open the door from the dining-room and 
came rushing through the store, holding in one hand a 
napkin and in the other a knife and fork, followed by a 
volume of black smoke. In her terror she ran across Wood 
Street and took refuge behind a long box which there stood 
on the pavement. A moment later the doctor appeared at 
the door, his red hair and beard blackened and scorched. 
Suddenly the thought of the baby, abandoned by the girl, 
occurred to him and turning back he rescued it from its 
dangerous berth. The varnish had taken fire. Everything 
in the kitchen was burned up, but the fire engines and hose, 
soon coming upon the alarm, put out the fire before greater 
harm had been done. For two weeks the doctor remained 
unable to attend to business and I had entire charge of and 
responsibility for the store. At the end of the year his wife 
had her way and he sold the store to a man named Rex. 
I remained with hun two weeks to enable him to learn the 
locations of the drugs and to introduce him to the customers, 
and then, having taken care of myself for a year and earned 
thirty dollars, I returned to Mont Clare. My entering the 
store was not altogether a wise movement, but, like most 
of the unwisdom of life, had its compensations in added 
experience and in ways we are not always able to measure. 

At this time Rev. Joel E. Bradley, a preacher of the 
Baptist Church, had opened a school for boys and girls in 

67 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

my old home, the house built by Wernwag in Phoenixville 
now called the Grovemont Seminary. A man of extensive 
acquirements, he aided in the translation of a revised 
version of the Scriptures from the Hebrew and Greek, and 
he had had long experience in teaching. It was a good 
school in the sense that those pupils who wanted to learn 
had the opportunity presented to them. On the other 
hand, he had a very kindly disposition and exercised little 
impelling force or restraint over those who were idle or 
indifferent. Under the tuition of Mr. Bradley I began 
preparation for the Sophomore class at Yale college and 
continued in the school for about two years. He told my 
mother that I was the most apt pupil he had ever known 
in his long experience. The ablest boy in the school was 
Samuel Sower, a descendant of the famous Germantown 
printer. He had the power to reason analytically and con- 
structively and moreover had an unusual gift of speech. I 
expected for him a brilliant future. We worked together, 
and together solved rebuses and enigmas and were very 
intimate, but one day we had a personal combat ending in 
ill feeling, and never renewed our relations. His life was 
without result and closed in failure. Every man, I take it, 
has certain sensations which verge upon the superstitious, 
and in fact we none of us know to what extent traces yet 
remain in our mental processes of what, with our ancestors 
in the dark ages, were fixed beliefs. So many men who have 
stood in my way in life have perished from before me, three 
of them having committed suicide, that I am at least able 
to understand why generations ago there was faith in and 
dread of the ''evil eye." When, years afterward, a friend of 
both quietly said to me in commenting upon the career of 
Sower: "He never seemed to do any good after his quarrel 
with you," it made me solemn and sad. Another boy, 
Singleton M. Ashenfelter, a little in the rough, but with 
vital energies and good-hearted, afterwards the United 
States District Attorney for New Mexico, became my 
68 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 

closest associate. The principal had two sons in the school. 
Joel, whom everybody liked, was killed in the Wilderness. 
A wounded comrade cried aloud for water and Joel went 
back and was shot while standing over him holding a canteen 
as he drank. The other son, William H. Bradley, studied 
medicine, became the editor of a paper in Wilkes-Barre and 
influential and then for some years was employed in the 
business department of the Weekly Press in Philadelphia. 
Quarreling with Cooke, the general manager, he was 
charged with embezzlement and convicted. I always 
doubted the justice of the result. Two of my first cousins, 
Benjamin R. and Andrew R. Whitaker, were also among 
the pupils. Benjamin, now dead, served throughout the war 
in the 104th Pennsylvania Regiment, and then, studying 
medicine, was surgeon to the ill-fated Collins expedition to 
Brazil. Andrew has ever been not only a relative but a 
staunch friend, and is now, by my appointment, a member of 
the Pennsylvania Fish Commission. Among the girls a 
sly little dark-eyed minx named Annie M. Taylor, pretty to 
look upon, caught the fancy of all of the boys, and another 
girl with dark eyes and red blood to color her lips and cheeks, 
more sedate but with a piece cut away from the top of her 
dress, as was then a fashion, caught mine. Her name was 
Virginia Earl Broomall. The games of the boys consisted 
of hand ball, corner ball, duck on davy and shindy; those 
of the girls jackstones and mumble-the-peg. We had 
occasional public exercises in the Temperance Hall, at which 
I usually delivered an address in French which indicated 
the erudition of the school but did very little good to the 
audience. I continued my French at Grovemont and so far 
progressed that I not only read the facile Telemaque of 
Fenelon but also a French translation of Cooper's Pioneers^ 
a much more difficult matter. In Latin I read a reader made 
up of JEsop's Fables and other materials, Caesar's De Bello 
Galileo, The Aeneid, Vergil's Georgics and Bucolics, Sallust, 
Horace and Livy. The classes were required to read, scan 

69 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

and translate fifteen lines of the Aeneid as a daily task. 
I read a hundred lines, because interested. Four books 
were all we were expected to complete and all that were 
demanded at Yale. I lay fiat on the floor in the garret at 
Mont Clare and finished the whole twelve books and like- 
wise all of the Georgics and Bucolics. I read in Greek, a 
reader, the Anabasis, the Testament, Herodotus and four 
books of Homer. The strength and precision of the Latin 
pleased me and it has never been forgotten. The elaboration 
of the Greek with its detail and profusion of form and dia- 
lects seemed to me to indicate a lack of force and Greek has 
meant little in my life but a recognition of scientific terms. 
In my fancies Homer fell far below Vergil. It may be 
unorthodox, but I am of the same opinion still. In mathe- 
matics I finished Euclid and Greenleaf's Algebra and went 
along with philosophy, chemistry, history, grammar and 
English composition. 

In 1859, at the age of seventeen, I had finished my edu- 
cation so far as schools were to give it to me, but the door 
to the learning of the world, as it is contained in printed 
books, had been opened to me and I have never permitted 
it to be closed. A college is a great opportunity, but after 
all it is only the beaten path. Where the journey ends 
depends upon the traveler. With the ending of my school 
days I consider that my youth ended and at a period in life 
where many men are only beginning, I had for years felt the 
responsibility of a burden. 



CHAPTER III 

Que Faire? 

THOUGH entirely prepared for the Sophomore 
Class at Yale, and in fact having progressed 
much farther in my studies than the requirements, 
the proposition had to be abandoned for the 
very prosaic reason that the necessary money could not 
be secured. 

Most people look back to their youth as a time of enjoy- 
ment, free from the sense of responsibility. With me 
the approach to manhood was a period filled with anxieties 
and uncertainties. I was about five feet ten inches in 
height, shm and anaemic, and weighed about one hundred 
and twenty-seven pounds. The mental attitude of those 
around me had a tendency to depress rather than to encour- 
age. My uncle, Dr. Samuel A. Whitaker, once told some- 
body that I should probably live to be about eighteen 
years of age, and in some way the diagnosis or prophesy 
had come to me. He did not stand alone; others of my 
relatives, more blunt than discreet, had indicated by word 
or manner a somewhat similar opinion and I had come to 
regard such a result as probable. I hoped to be able to 
last until thirty-five, so that I might have the opportunity 
to see whether I could not do some useful thing in life. 
Remembering these moods now, I can see that they were 
entirely unreal, because they were always accompanied 
with a determination to take hold somewhere and a sense 
that I would succeed. This is not the feeling of a moribund 
or weakling. Nevertheless I must have approached a 
condition not then recognized but which I have since 
come to know as nervous prostration. Once, after going 

71 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

with my mother to the railroad station to take a train, 
some ill-defined sensation compelled a return home. I 
could not lift a spoon or hold a pen to write or do many 
Httle things in the presence of other persons. All of the 
while I felt the necessity of getting started in some occupa- 
tion in which I could earn enough to take care of myself 
and perhaps be helpful to the rest; but to find the opening 
was the problem. I knew that finally I should reach the 
law and in the meantime was ready to do whatever happened 
to be within reach. I made an application for a clerkship 
in the office of the Phoenix Iron Company. I asked for 
a place in the general store of Reeves & Cornett, a close- 
fisted firm doing business in Phoenixville. I tried to get 
my uncle, George W. Whitaker, to give me a place at the 
Durham Iron Works, but he pursued the cautious and 
safe policy of not having any of the family around him. 

In the early days of the war, there was a great gathering 
of mules, about thirty thousand of them, in a camp of the 
Commissary Department at Perryville, Maryland, and 
having reason to believe that I could exert some influence 
upon Colonel Charles G. Sawtelle, in command there, I 
asked for some sort of a position in connection with the 
handling of those mules. Happily for me, all of these 
efforts ended in failure. So often the disappointments 
of life turn out for our benefit. Twice during each week 
I arose at daylight and trudged across the long bridge to 
the town market, and returning carried back in a large 
basket perhaps twenty-five pounds of beef to my mother. 
Connected with the house was a large garden in which 
grapes grew over an arbor and therein my good old grand- 
mother had rows of gooseberry bushes and currant bushes 
— red, black and white — and planted hollyhocks and dahlias, 
to her delight. I dug the garden, all with a spade, and 
cultivated it, raising radishes, peas, beans, asparagus, 
cabbage, turnips, beets, com and potatoes. 

In Phoenixville the Young Men's Literary Union had 
72 



QUE FAIRE? 

a room over the store of Reeves & Cornett, at, the corner 
of Bridge and Main streets, and there subscribed not 
only for the daily newspapers of Philadelphia and New 
York, and the magazines, but even for the London Punch 
and Times and the London Art Journal and Harper^ s 
Weekly, Vanity Fair and the Scientific Monthly. It like- 
wise had a fair library of romance, history and science. 
On certain evenings topics of the day were discussed in 
formal debate. The debating societies of my youth cer- 
tainly helped me very much to gain self-possession and 
to develop the capacity for public speech which I have 
been called upon to exercise all through life. Among 
the members were the two lawyers then in the town — 
William H. Peck, who had studied both medicine and 
law, subsequently becoming a sui^eon in one of the regi- 
ments during the war, a fluent man of some attainments, 
and perhaps, for this reason, looked upon with disfavor, 
and Charles Armitage, slouchy, ill-trained, ignorant and 
good-natured, who was always a favorite and was later 
killed while fighting the battles of his country. Among 
the other members were Ashenfelter, before referred to, 
Horace Lloyd, an upright, narrow and methodical clerk 
in the bank, and Josiah White. White had force of char- 
acter. Ashenfelter annoyed him, and White emptied a 
bottle of ink over the light coat of his tormentor. Lloyd 
occupied two chairs, one with his heels, absorbing the 
Tribune, which he had held on to during the greater part 
of the evening. White interrupted this serenity by setting 
fire to the paper. A lieutenant in Company G of the 
First Pennsylvania Reserves, he was wounded at Antietam 
and killed in the Wilderness. I became president of the 
Literary Union. 

In the year 1859 I suggested to my cousin, Benjamin 
R. Whitaker, that we two, he being then fifteen and I 
sixteen, take a walk across country down into the State 
of Maryland. At that time it was not the habit to walk. 

73 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Soon afterward the war made walking a necessity to many 
and disclosed to the rest their capacity for this kind of 
exercise, and in recent years fashion has made it a conven- 
tional thing to do. But then every countryman who 
had half a mile to traverse hitched his horse to a buggy 
and drove. Our proposition had no precedent among the 
people we knew and was regarded as bold and venture- 
some. Whitaker's father overcame the fears of his mother 
by telling her we would probably go as far as West Chester, 
fifteen miles away, but that he fully expected to see us at 
home the next evening. We started in the early morning, 
with staff and satchel, and in an outing of about two weeks 
made a trip of one hundred and seventy-five miles, walking 
at the rate of from twenty-five to thirty miles a day. We 
crossed the Chester Valley to West Chester, thence to 
Unionville and Oxford and the rough section of Lancaster 
County towards Peach Bottom, over the Susquehanna 
River at Conowingo bridge, through Harford County, 
Maryland, by the dilapidated old village of Dubhn, to the 
Deer Creek, where my uncle, Washington Pennypacker, 
then owned a farm. His oldest son, Matthias, about my 
own age, lost his life in the war, and he with his family, 
insisting upon flying the flag of the country from the top 
of his house, was soon afterward driven from the state. 
Here we remained for a few days, Benjamin for the first time 
making the acquaintance of a hornet, visited the granite 
rocks of Deer Creek, and then walked to Havre de Grace, 
encountering a severe thunder shower on the way. There, 
a mile and a half from the town, my uncle, WilUam P. C. 
Whitaker, owned the beautiful place called Mount Pleasant. 
The mansion of brick, plastered, with an elaborately carved 
walnut stairway running from the main hall to the second 
story, and taking flight by a bridge across the hall from 
one side of a gallery to the other, occupied at the time of 
the War of 1812 by Colonel Hughes, one of the proprietors 
of the Principio Iron Works, overlooked the Chesapeake 
74 



QUE FAIRE? 

Bay, and from the front a long avenue ran to the bay 
through a wood of forest trees. From there we crossed 
the Susquehanna to Principio, and through the lower 
part of Chester County to Avondale and Kennett Square. 
The last day's walk was from Kennett Square to Phoenix- 
ville. As we went down Main Street, on our way home, 
we met a rather stout, full-faced man with a sandy com- 
plexion and side whiskers who greeted our return with, 
"I shall put you in the paper." He has had a career, 
and it is worth while to stop and look at him. I can well 
remember the healthy appearance, the cordial and attractive 
manner and the pleasing personality. 

John Henry Puleston at that time was the editor of 
the Phcenixville Guardian, a weekly newspaper which had 
a brief and checkered existence. He came to Phcenixville 
from Scranton and in a few months he left the town, owing 
everybody in it who could be persuaded by affabihty to 
trust him, even the poor woman who did the family washing. 
No doubt he was absolutely without resources. Soon after- 
ward Governor Curtin appointed him an agent for the 
State at Washington. He then became associated with 
Jay Cooke, who sent him to London, where he acquired 
an interest in the firm and became its representative in 
England. When Cooke went down under the weight 
of the Northern Pacific Railroad, in some way Puleston 
managed to hold up his end and became wealthy. Presently 
he was made a baronet and went to Parliament, and he 
died a few years ago in a castle in Wales which he had 
bought with his acquisitions. Many years after I had 
met him on Main Street I was one of the managers of the 
Penn Club, an organization of note in Philadelphia. It 
was determined to tender the hospitalities of the club 
and give a reception to a distinguished member of the 
British Parliament about to visit America. The arrange- 
ments had progressed to a certain extent, but were revoked 
when it was bruited about that if he came he would fall 

75 



autobioGtRaphy of a pennsylvanian 

into the hands of the sheriff. Thereupon Sir John Henry 
Puleston, M. P. — it was he — hunted up his old debts and 
paid them. To all of his American acquaintances he was 
kind and attentive when they sought him, and his neglect 
of his obligations of the past was probably as much due to 
inertia as to any other cause. 

The winter of 1861-62 I spent at the store of Whitaker & 
Coudon, a firm consisting of my grandfather, my great- 
uncle, George P. Whitaker, of Principio, and the son-in- 
law of the latter, Joseph Coudon, who then lived in Camden. 
Their store ran from Water Street to Delaware Avenue 
in Philadelphia and there they sold the iron made at Durham 
and Principio furnaces, and likewise represented the SchaUs 
of Norristown; White, Ferguson & Co. of Robesonia; and 
other iron firms, and were the sole agents for the Burdens 
of Troy, New York, in the sale of their horseshoes. I 
assisted Oliver C. Lund, a gouty, white-haired old retainer, 
perched upon a high stool, to keep the books and also 
rolled out kegs of nails and horseshoes, when they were 
to be shipped, and did whatever else was to be done. I 
boarded at a hotel on the east side of Third Street and 
there added somewhat to my reputation as a checker 
player. An irascible Irishman named Felix O'Barr had 
come to be recognized as the champion among the merchants 
and their clerks who found a temporary home at the hotel. 
One evening he met an opponent to whom he was com- 
pelled to succumb. After the match had been lost he said 
to his foe, ''You can't play checkers. There is a boy here 
who can beat you." And the boy did. 

In the summer of 1862, at Mont Clare, I one day read 
an announcement that Mr. Cruikshank, the county super- 
intendent of public schools in Montgomery County, would 
hold an examination to determine the selection of teachers 
for the following winter. Without a word to any one, I 
put a saddle on the bay horse, rode over to the Trappe, 
in company with numerous other appHcants took the 
76 



QUE FAIRE? 

examination, and in the evening came home with a certificate 
in my pocket. At my request the directors gave me the 
school at Mont Clare, a little one-story stone building 
with one room. It has since been torn down. Mr. 
C. Herman Oberholtzer of Phoenixville had a cane made 
from the wood with the figure of the house carved on it 
and presented it to me. I taught for a term of eight months 
for a compensation of thirty dollars per month. The 
children were of both sexes and ranged from httle tots, 
trying to learn their A, B, C's, to young men and women 
eighteen years of age, and in all there were from fifty to 
sixty scholars. It had been a disorderly school and one 
of the amusements in earlier winters had been to put the 
teacher out of the room. I used various devices to estabhsh 
and enforce discipUne. When a boy used filthy language 
I washed out his mouth with coarse soap. I compelled a 
disobedient scholar to stand in the corner with his face 
to the wall, a position which in time grew to be very monot- 
onous. The names of those who did the best each week 
were kept on the blackboard where all could see them. 
I kept regular records of accomplishment and conduct 
and sent the results at stated intervals to the parents. 
One of the largest boys, as old as myself and no doubt 
much stronger, the son of a farmer named Strough, once 
committed some gross offense and I determined that unless 
I should flog him my hold was gone. I quietly told him 
that I wanted him after the school had been dismissed. 
The children watched in awe and I was probably as uneasy 
as he. Near the close of the session his nerve gave way 
and grabbing his books he made a bolt for the door, much 
to my rehef, and I never saw him more. I had a 
class in Brooks' Mental Arithmetic, and one of the 
young women, a Miss Carohne Billew (Boileau), went 
entirely through Greenleaf's Arithmetic with me. Once 
a month I rode on horseback six miles to a teachers' 
institute at the Trappe and there, among other teachers, 

77 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

met H. W. Kratz, now president of the Schwenksville 
National Bank. 

After all of these more or less desultory efforts to secure 
a foothold, at last the uncertainties disappeared and my 
course became fixed. My grandfather, somewhat influenced 
by my uncle, Joseph, concluded to advance me the money 
with which to read law. He was much aroused over the 
war and it is very likely that my recent participation in 
some of its events had finally convinced him that I had 
sufficient character to make the expenditure of the money 
a fair business risk. The counsel of Whitaker & Condon 
had been James Otterson, but not long before, Otterson 
had taken into an important matter for them, Peter McCall 
and he had made a very favorable impression. It was 
determined that I should enter the office of Mr. McCall. 
But I was then about twenty years and six months old. 
If I began the office study before the age of twenty-one, 
I was required to study for three years, and if after twenty- 
one, then but two years. We determined that these six 
months should be saved. At that time Enoch Taylor, 
the brother of the most intimate friend of my mother, 
more of a conve3''ancer than a lawyer, afterward sheriff 
of Philadelphia, had an office on Sixth Street on the east 
side not far from Race. He was a thin, nervous, childless, 
timid man, with so abundant a knowledge of real estate 
and its transactions that whenever a Republican was 
elected sheriff of the county he was selected as chief deputy, 
in order to see that the unknowing sheriff did not get into 
trouble. Finally at a time of political upheaval he was 
himself elected sheriff. He very kindly consented to let 
me read in his office temporarily and there I made my 
acquaintance with Blackstone. He had one assistant, 
Elias P. Smithers, who had come to the city from Delaware, 
then very much attached to the work of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church and almost a devotee. Later he 
broadened, came to the bar, entered politics, became 
78 



QUE FAIRE? 

register of wills, and died from a fall down a stairway, 
leaving a considerable estate. After my birthday in April 
of 1864, I entered the office of Peter McCall and may then 
be regarded as having commenced the serious business of 
life. 



79 



CHAPTER IV 
The War 

IN the year 1858 a comet of vast proportions swept 
across the sky and its tail, spread out like a curved fan, 
extended over perhaps one-third of the visible heavens. 
Such appearances in ages past always portended war, 
and while the superstitions, which were once realities in 
their effect upon the conduct of men, had waned, the mental 
impressions made by them are yet uneffaced. In the inland 
villages people looked at the heavens and, with smiles of 
assumed incredulity, shook their heads and said trouble 
was coming for the country. 

In 1860 another great comet appeared, and to those 
inclined to view the apparition as a foreboding, the recur- 
rence had much more than duplicated significance. There 
were other warnings of coming events more tangible and 
some of them nearer at home. 

The boys of the Grovemont Seminary were one day 
playing ball in the road in front of the house when the 
startling news came that a man named John Brown had 
invaded the South in an effort to free the slaves and had 
captured the arsenal at Harper's Ferry. In the main the 
sentiment in the school was Republican and opposed to 
slavery. Roger B. Taney, who, as Chief Justice, had 
rendered the Dred Scott decision, they flouted. A mile 
away, at the Corner Stores, Elijah F. Pennypacker, a Quaker, 
six feet four inches in height and straight as an arrow, at 
one time president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, 
had a station on the Underground Railroad and when, as 
occasionally happened, an unknown negro was met wending 
his way northward, he was bidden "Godspeed." While, 
80 



THE WAR 

therefore, the effort of Brown could not be justified by logic 
or reconciled with the duty to obey the law, there was an 
undercurrent of hope that in some way he might succeed, 
and when he was captured, tried and hanged, the result was 
accepted with the sense that the incident had not been 
altogether closed. 

Jesse Conway lived in a little stone house at the entrance 
of the bridge which crossed the Schuylkill and there gathered 
the tolls — one penny for a foot passenger, five cents for a 
one-horse carriage and ten cents for a two-horse carriage. 
He and our neighbors, the Jacobs family, were Abolitionists. 
The men of the Whitaker family, old-line Whigs turned 
adrift, supported Fillmore in 1856 and Bell in 1860, but the 
women, more emotional, agreed with the Jacobs family, 
and I shouted in 1856 as loudly as I could for Fremont. 
John Jacobs subscribed for the New York Tribune, which 
daily lay at the toll house until he called for it, and there I 
managed to read doctrine which could not be found at home. 
One day I sat on the wooden bench in front of the toll house 
and read a speech delivered the night before at the Cooper 
Institute in New York by a man named Lincoln, from Illi- 
nois. It made a great impression upon me and when John 
Jacobs came along I called his attention to it as the argument 
of a man of great ability and absolutely unanswerable. 

The political feeUng became intense, for the reason that 
the issues had been swept away from questions of mere 
sordid interest and now appealed to the underlying human 
sympathies. John Hickman, the member of Congress from 
Chester County, a lifelong Democrat, no doubt somewhat 
influenced by the Quaker sentiment surrounding him 
abandoned Buchanan when the President supported the 
Lecompton Constitution maintaining slavery in Kansas, and 
established a national reputation. He was a slim, dark- 
eyed man with a power for vigorous, sarcastic and even 
vindictive eloquence. When he made a speech something 
or somebody was rended. A story whispered around over 
6 81 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

the country at the time said he had inherited some of his 
characteristics from Indian ancestors, and only within the 
last few years I have discovered original contemporary 
evidence that one of the Lenni Lenape employed about the 
iron works at Coventry, in Chester County, in 1726, bore the 
name of ''Indian John Hiclanan." Whatever may have 
been the truth or want of truth of this story, the bit of 
romance detracted nothing from his influence. We were 
all proud of him and of the reputation he had won, and when 
we saw a reference to him in a journal published so far away 
as New York, or mayhap Boston, we felt a sense of reflected 
importance. More than once the thought came to me that 
if ever I could be of consequence enough to be sent to Con- 
gress the ambitions of Ufe would be sated. At the next 
congressional election there were three candidates — a 
Lecompton Democrat; Hickman, the anti-Lecompton Demo- 
crat, and John M. Broomall, the regular Republican. 
Most of the Repubhcans supported Hickman and he was 
re-elected. The contest grew very bitter. On one occasion 
the Democrats of Tunnel Hill concluded to erect a pole on 
the south side of the creek, near the Eight Square school-house. 
It was regarded as a sort of invasion. The pole, of huge 
proportions, consisting of a heavy tree for a butt and a long 
sapling for a top, lay on the ground ready to be spliced and 
erected the next morning. Suspicious of trouble, a selected 
squad of those interested came to keep watch. The night 
turned out to be dark, cold and wet and the watchmen 
sought the shelter of the school-house, where, perhaps, they 
had something to provide for warmth and comfort. When 
morning dawned the top of the pole had disappeared entirely, 
and the butt was found bored through with auger holes. 
The top had been carried to the Schuylkill and thro\\Ti into 
the river. So far as I know no contemporary whisper 
hinted at those who indulged in this escapade, but among 
the participants were Richard Denithorne, Ashenfelter and 
myself. 
82 



THE WAR 

In the Presidential campaign of 1860 another ominous 
event occurred. At the political meetings held by the 
Republicans, clubs called ''Wide Awakes," never before 
known, wearing oilcloth caps and capes as a sort of uniform, 
carrying torches upon the end of long staffs often used as 
bludgeons, drilled to march and go through the maneuvers 
of the manual of arms in a semi-military way, appeared all 
over the North and were everywhere greeted with enthusi- 
astic approval. I do not know that their significance was 
recognized, but a philosophical observer could well have 
forecasted that when men instinctively turned to military 
organization, war was approaching. 

When Lincoln came to Philadelphia on his way to Wash- 
ington to be inaugurated, my grandfather and I went to the 
city and from a second-story window watched him as he 
passed in a barouche bowing to the crowds, anxious but 
earnest, who lined the streets. The next morning we heard 
him make his speech in which he alluded to the possibility 
of assassination, and saw him raise the flag over Inde- 
pendence Hall. He took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves 
and pulled at the rope, hand over hand, in a way which led 
my grandfather to ejaculate, "I think he will do." 

The rebels opened fii-e upon Fort Sumter on the 12th of 
April, 1861. That event put an end to uncertainty. Every- 
body knew what it meant. The great North, untrained in 
the handUng of arms, without an organized militia, intent 
upon the gainful pursuits of life, had a new task to perform. 
In the earher days some generous person had given the field 
at Paoli to the militia and there they had annual encamp- 
ments. I could remember that once, when a child, my 
father took me there to see the soldiers. Some drunken 
fellows in the course of the day undertook to pull Colonel 
William F. Small from his horse. He drew his sword, sliced 
the ear off of one of them and established the reputation of 
a hero which has remained with me even unto this day. 
Dr. Walker, a handsome, companionable young fellow, who 

83 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

read medicine with my father, had became the major of one 
of the regiments. We had heard that Levi P. Knerr, born 
in Phoenixville, had been a heutenant in the war with 
Mexico. 

But all of this activity had disappeared for years, Paoli 
was overrun with mullen and jimson (Jamestown) weeds, 
and military affairs had fallen into desuetude. Prior to the 
firing upon Sumter, the North was dull, inert and waiting 
only. It hoped, even expected, that some way would be 
found to avoid the difficulty. There had been threats 
before, but the danger had been postponed if not averted. 
There had been a Missouri Compromise. Later Daniel 
Webster, who spoke well enough against Hayne, had lain 
down and consented to be trampled upon. Something like 
it might be done again. As a psychological phenomenon, 
the effect of the firing upon Fort Sumter was most impres- 
sive. The torpor disappeared at the instant. No one any 
longer thought of yielding or compromise. The Union, 
whether or not, was to be preserved. The rebels, if they 
resisted, were to be shot. The Copperheads, as those of the 
North who opposed the war were called, were to be silenced 
by use of such force as might be necessary, and in the mean- 
time they must fly the flag from the windows and chimney 
tops of their houses. In their hearts many men resolved 
that slavery, that vile institution which had brought all of 
this trouble upon us, should be driven from the earth. 
Every man began to brace himself and set his teeth. He 
hunted up and polished the old fowling piece which had 
been rusting in the garret. The young girls looked through 
their music books for the ''Star Spangled Banner" and 
"Hail, Columbia!" Red, white and blue neckties were 
tied around their throats. They sent letters to their lovers 
in envelopes which displayed the same colors and other 
patriotic devices. Recruiting stations appeared in the 
taverns and corner groceries and every young man expected, 
and was expected, to bear his part in the struggle. The 
84 



THE WAR 

sounds of the drum and fife were heard everywhere in the 
streets. Instead of hammers and tacks, weapons were dis- 
played in the windows of the hardware stores. From the 
pulpits preachers told the stories of Joshua and of Judith. 
The women organized themselves into societies, the object 
of which was to make uniforms and to pick Unt and to 
prepare for nursing. 

At this time my uncle, Joseph R. Whitaker, lived at 
Mount Pleasant, in Maryland, about a mile and a half from 
Havre de Grace, and my uncle, William P. C. Whitaker, 
with a family of five daughters, lived in Havre de Grace. 
It looked for a time as though Maryland would follow the 
other states of the South into the maelstrom of secession, and 
the clouds gathered darkly up to the very borders of Penn- 
sylvania. My grandfather, anxious to communicate with 
his sons and grandchildren there, and to make some provision 
for them, on the 22d of April went to Philadelphia, intend- 
ing to go by train to Havre de Grace, and he took me with 
him. At the depot of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and 
Baltimore Railroad in Philadelphia, we learned that the 
bridges over the Gunpowder and Bush rivers emptying 
into the Chesapeake Bay, had been burned in an uprising 
of secessionists, and that the train could go no farther than 
Wilmington, Delaware. Returning home with additional 
cause for excitement and uncertainty, we held a council. 
It was determined that Michael Weldon, the hired man, 
with Bridget, his wife, should drive with the two-horse 
carriage across Chester and Lancaster counties to the Cono- 
wingo bridge over the Susquehanna, and thence across 
Harford County in Maryland to Havre de Grace. I was 
to be the agent of communication. The journey down occu- 
pied two days. On our way in Lancaster County, Mike 
and I dropped the reins, chased a raccoon across two fields, 
captured him and put him in the carriage box and brought 
him safely back to Mont Clare, where he was finally killed 
by the dogs. The secessionists of Maryland had contem- 

85 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

plated burning the Conowingo bridge, but finally concluded 
to station a party of horsemen at the northern end to pre- 
vent the passage of all who were objectionable and burn it 
if necessary. We were halted by this party, who, guns in 
hand, surrounded the carriage. It was the first hostile force 
I had ever confronted and I was curious as well as uneasy. 
My story, however, had been already concocted. I had 
been at school at Nottingham in Chester County. The 
troubles of the time had made my parents uneasy and they 
had sent the servants for me to take me home to Havre de 
Grace. The tale was plausible enough and we were per- 
mitted to cross the bridge. We reached Uncle Joseph at 
Mount Pleasant without any further adventure. The 
events occurring around were sufficiently stirring. The 
Union men and the secessionists were both aroused and 
bitter in their antagonism and were about evenly divided. 
Uncle George P. Whitaker of Principio was a resolute Union 
man; his son-in-law, Joseph Coudon, was a determined 
secessionist. They quarreled and severed relations and 
the latter, on one occasion, only escaped some infuriated 
opponents by the help of a back window. Another uncle, 
Washington Pennypacker, living on the Deer Creek, in 
Harford County, raised the stars and stripes over his home, 
and as I have written before, was driven out of the state. 

On the 18th of April, five companies from Pennsylvania, 
the advance of a mighty host, had gone through to Wash- 
ington. The next day Colonel Small, to whom I have 
referred in connection with Paoli, at the head of the Seventh 
Pennsylvania Regiment, and the Sixth Massachusetts 
Regiment, were attacked in Baltimore. Among the wounded 
was Henry C. Dodge, a printer in the office of the Weekly 
Phoenix, the Phcenixville newspaper, who returned home 
with a cut across the hand and established his reputation as 
a hero. The immediate danger at Havre de Grace soon 
disappeared. When we reached there a camp had already 
been estabhshed at Perryville, on the opposite side of the 



THE WAR 

Susquehanna, and Union troops were collecting there in 
great numbers. Among those I remember seeing were 
Lieutenant-Colonel Edwin Schall, of the Fourth Pennsyl- 
vania Regiment, and John F. Hartranft, later to become 
famous as a major-general, the organizer of the National 
Guard of Pennsylvania and Governor of the Common- 
wealth, so dark in complexion that he was at times called 
"Black Jack Hartranft." With piercing black eyes, erect 
and vigorous, an exceptional horseman, taciturn, endowed 
with courage and great executive capacity, he ought to 
have been President of the United States at the time Hayes 
was elected, and would have been had not the bad Pennsyl- 
vania habit of opposing her own prevented. 

The destruction of the railroad bridges had separated 
Washington from the North, and Perryville has the honor 
of being the earliest outpost of the war. A great outcry 
ran through the camp about the poor quality of the 
"shoddy" clothing, and there was much denunciation of the 
civil authorities. In the hurry of the time, clothing had to 
be secured in every possible way and at the outset 
it was very imperfect, but ere long it came to be of the 
most durable texture, and a workman who could secure 
a pair of old army-blue pantaloons felt that he was fortu- 
nate indeed. 

Brigadier-General Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts 
came to take command of the camp. At that time the 
railroad trains ran on to the top of a huge steamboat and it 
carried them across the river between Perryville and Havre 
de Grace. One morning when the boat was about to leave 
the wharf, Butler, complying with orders sent him by 
Major-General Patterson, the Department Commander, 
with a part of his force, marched on board and the boat 
started for the opposite shore. In mid-stream he ordered 
the captain to take his boat down the Chesapeake. The 
captain objected strenuously and gave many reasons why 
such a move would be impossible, but in the end was com- 

87 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

pelled to succumb. Butler landed at Annapolis, opened 
communication with Washington, cut off Baltimore from 
the south and, working backward, soon had possession 
of that city and the secession movement in Maryland 
failed. 

At the end of my mission, I took the raccoon and returned 
to Mont Clare, having seen the opening phases of the war 
in its nearest approach to our own homes. 

When I was a child about seven years of age, my father 
one day took me to a house on Nutt's Road on the north side 
about a half mile from Phoenixville and within a short 
distance of the Corner Stores. In the house was a modest, 
diffident boy, perhaps a Uttle larger than myself. My 
father said to me: "Sam, this is your cousin, Galusha 
Pennypacker, " and we played together about the yard. 
As he grew toward manhood, he found emplojrment in the 
printing office of the Village Record at West Chester. At 
the very beginning of the war, he enlisted as a private, 
having dechned the position of first lieutenant because he 
felt himself incompetent. When the company left West 
Chester a wise bystander said to his friend: "There is one 
man in that company who will never fight." 

"Who is it?" 

"That young Penn3^acker." 

At the close of the war he returned a brigadier-general 
and brevet major-general of volunteers, at twenty- two 
years of age, the youngest man who had ever held such 
high rank since the organization of the Government. He 
had been shot seven times in eight months. Commanding 
a brigade in the assault upon Fort Fisher, the only fortifica- 
tion taken by storm during the war, when the color-bearer 
of the regiment, of which he had been the colonel, had been 
killed, he seized the flag and planted it upon a traverse of 
the fort. At this moment a rebel placed a rifle at his thigh 
and fired. He was supposed to be dead. The main nerve 
had been severed. He lay at Fortress Monroe for a year 
88 




Brevet Major General Galusha Pennypacker, U. S. A 



THE WAR 

and has never recovered. * He was made a colonel, briga- 
dier-general and brevet major-general in the regular 
army — likewise the youngest man who ever held those 
ranks. For a time he commanded the Department of the 
South. He was in command at New Orleans at the time 
that a commission was sent to investigate the conditions 
which led to the Hayes-Tilden electoral dispute. Grant 
refers to him in his Memoirs and no history of the war is 
written which does not tell of his heroic services. He is 
one of three of his family and name who have been suggested 
for the governorship. He represented the American army 
at Berhn at the review of the German army at the close of 
the war with France and received much attention from the 
Emperor and Count Bismarck. Tall, big-boned, with much 
courtesy of manner, with native intelligence and great 
power of will, he is a remarkable character. 

A company of Irishmen from Tunnel Hill enlisted in the 
Seventy-first Pennsylvania Volunteers and were with Webb 
at the bloody angle at Gettysburg. A company from the 
south side of the town became Company G of the First 
Pennsylvania Reserves. Among the first to enlist was 
Josiah White, a bright, lively and muscular young fellow, 
engaged to be married to Kate VandersUce, and he became 
first heutenant of Company G. When his body was 
brought to Phoenixville, from the Wilderness battlefield, 
where he was killed, in accordance with a custom which 
still lingered, Lloyd, Ashenfelter and I watched over it all 
night, and we carried him to his grave in the Dunker 
graveyard, at the Green Tree. Kate Vanderslice, his fiancee, 
soon died, and in a gloomy and sombre poem which I wrote 
in early life, I endeavored to tell the tale of their misfortunes. 

The pretty young woman who later became my wife, 
along with the other girls of her age, made in the hall of the 
Young Men's Literary Union the uniforms which Company 

♦From the wound then received, General Pennypacker, on October 1, 1916, nearly fifty- 
two yeara afterward, bled to death, within a month after the death of Governor Pennypacker. 

89 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

G wore to the front. My mother made rusk and sent it in 
boxes to the army and the hospitals, and my aunt, Mary A. 
Pennypacker, a proud and good woman, after the Battle of 
Gettysburg, went to the field to nurse the wounded and 
spent weeks amid the miseries there. The spirit of willing- 
ness to sacrifice self which was everywhere developed was 
one of the compensations for the struggle. The flag floated 
over almost every household. If any man dared to give 
utterance to hostility to the Government, he did it at the 
risk of physical violence then and there. Currency became 
scarce. As a means of overcoming this difficulty postage 
stamps were put up in small envelopes, labeled on the 
outside with the amount and this led to the gradual evolution 
of the fractional postal currency which for years was the 
only kind seen. Coin entirely disappeared. Prices of all 
commodities soon began to advance. At home we occa- 
sionally used rye as a substitute for coffee without much 
success. The Phoenix Iron Company adapted their mill 
to the manufacture of a cannon, invented by John Griffen, 
their manager, made of layers of twisted metal. These guns, 
before being sent to the Government, were tested by firing 
shells across the Schuylkill into the hillside north of Mont 
Clare, on the top of which now quietly stands a graveyard. 
From this source of supply, gathering balls and slugs, with 
an old fowling piece of large bore, I practiced marksmanship. 
The military impulse had arisen and I wanted to enhst, but 
I was my mother's dependence, and she persuaded me to 
wait. She consented to my going to West Point. The 
vacancy controlled by our Congressman, William Morris 
Davis, had been filled, but he offered me the appointment to 
Annapolis, which I declined. To that vacancy he then 
appointed a young friend of mine who is now Rear-Admiral 
Stockton of the Navy, who has been president of the Naval 
War College and of the George Washington University. 
Mr. Davis suggested that I might obtain a West Point 
cadetship by securing one of the appointments at large in 
90 



THE WAR 

the control of Mr. Lincoln. The Congressman from Har- 
ford County, Maryland (I think his name was Howard), 
came to his help, and Richard Yates, the Governor of 
Illinois, who was under obligations to my grandfather, used 
his influence. On the day of the Battle of Bull Run, I was 
again at Mount Pleasant to go with my Uncle Joseph, grand- 
father and great-uncle, George P. Whitaker, to Washington 
to meet the President. The time was most inopportime for 
the purpose we had in view, but rich in the opportunities it 
gave for reminiscences. In Havre de Grace I saw a soldier 
shot and killed. A regiment of Maine lumbermen on their 
way to the South halted in the town and threw out their 
guards. One of the men tried to force his way across the 
line, and the guard, on the point of being overcome, fired 
his musket. The ball did not touch the offender, but passed 
through the lungs of another member of the regiment, 
through two sides of a car and buried itself in a stone wall. 
The stricken man bled to death. Hardly had this occurrence 
ended when great excitement arose through the efforts of 
the soldiers to hang a German baker in the town accused of 
having sold them cakes filled with ground glass. With 
difficulty he escaped, getting over a fence in the rear of his 
garden and being hidden by some of the townsmen. The 
charge was probably entirely unfounded. 

In Washington we stopped at Willard's Hotel and found 
the city in a state of the utmost excitement and confusion 
expecting the approach of the rebels. The army were 
scattered about the streets of the city, the men of different 
regiments mingling together just as they happened to meet. 
Aides and messengers in uniform were galloping hither and 
yon and indicating by their acts and manner the tense state 
of their nerves. I saw one who, in his haste and excitement, 
ran his horse directly upon the tongue of an artillery car- 
riage coming the other way, and the horse, with penetrated 
breast, fell dead. Upon the floors of Willard's lay a 
number of the New York Fire Zouaves who told us rather 

91 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

highly colored narratives of their encounter with the Black 
Horse Cavalry. Around each narrator gathered a knot of 
eager listeners whose interest was heightened by the con- 
sciousness each possessed of the surrounding uncertainties. 
General Winfield Scott, whom we saw upon horseback, 
seemed both too old and too corpulent for responsibility 
in such a crisis. My grandfather and his brother were both 
concerned for the fortunes of General McDowell, for the 
personal reason that he had married a daughter of Burden 
of Troy, New York, of whom they were the business repre- 
sentatives in Philadelphia. We had influence enough to 
get from Drake DeKay, whose autograph was apparently 
made with a pair of tongs, a pass to enter the various forti- 
fications which were being rapidly constructed for the 
defense of the city. We likewise drove across the Long 
Bridge and to Arlington, which was then not a cemetery, 
and to Alexandria, where we saw the house in which the 
rebel tavern-keeper, Jackson, had shot Colonel Ellsworth 
and had himself fallen a few minutes later. It is difficult 
for those of the present day to understand what a wave of 
intense emotion spread over the land when Ellsworth was 
killed, but they can secure some idea of it by observing what 
a number of living men bear the name Elmer E. He was 
young, courageous and attractive, and became one of the 
earliest sacrifices offered up to the moloch of slavery. At 
the capitol I was introduced to Emerson Etheridge, one of 
the congressmen from Tennessee, who remained loyally at 
his post, notwithstanding the action of his state. Dark- 
eyed, slight in build and voluble, he spat tobacco juice right 
and left over the beautiful marble which adorned the fire- 
place of the committee-room. I also met Potter of Wiscon- 
sin — short, chunky and muscular — who was then in great 
repute, because when Roger A. Pryor of Virginia, a cadaver- 
ous fireeater, challenged him to a duel, he accepted and 
selected bowie knives as the weapons. Thereupon Pryor 
withdrew upon the theory that they were not the weapons 
92 



THE WAR 

of a gentleman. It was the general opinion that Potter 
would have cut Pryor, who had more assertiveness than 
strength, into pieces. In the Senate John C. Breckinridge 
of Kentucky, who maintained the ethically indefensible 
attitude of participating in the legislation of the Govern- 
ment while making his arrangements for command in the 
rebel army to fight against it, attracted much attention. 
Tall and of good proportions, handsome, dark as an Indian, 
with straight black hair, he walked up and down the chamber 
with slow step and with his hands clasped behind him, giving 
to all a good view of his imposing person. Later he became 
a major-general in the rebel service and in a number of 
defeats was still conspicuous, though I believe a brave 
soldier. I also met John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, then 
old, thin and a little withered and wrinkled, who had made 
an earnest effort to avert the inevitable struggle. Much of 
the conversation about the capitol concerned those congress- 
men who had gone in a barouche to view the battle and had 
fallen into the hands of the enemy. 

We returned home, having failed in the object of our 
visit, but I had been in the midst of the most trying and 
critical situation of the entire war. If the rebels had 
advanced upon Washington after their success at Bull Run, 
the whole history of the world might have been changed. 
The prevalent feeling in Washington at the time was that 
we were in immediate danger and that the final outcome was 
in grave doubt. 

In 1863 I was a private in Company F of the Twenty- 
sixth Pennsylvania Emergency Regiment which met Early's 
division of Lee's Army as it advanced upon Gettysburg 
before the coming of the Army of the Potomac under Meade. 
I do not intend to give here the details and incidents of that 
campaign, for the reason that I wrote at the time a full 
description of it, afterward published in my Historical and 
Biographical Sketches, and for the further reason that in my 
address at the dedication of the monument erected on the 

d3 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

field I made a thorough study of the contemporary orders 
relating to it showing its unique importance. The address 
may be found in the two volumes of Pennsylvania at Gettys- 
burg published by the state. It is my purpose here only to 
fill in a few additional features and to make some comments 
rather philosophical than historical. I went as a sergeant 
with a company from Phcenixville to Harrisburg in June. 
I had never been in that city before, and that night I slept 
on the stone steps of the capitol wrapped in a red horse 
blanket. In view of my election to the governorship of the 
state, this incident has certain dramatic features, of which 
the Honorable Hampton L. Carson made good use in the 
nominating convention. When it was discovered that the 
men were required to be sworn into the service of the 
United States, the company with which I had come, com- 
posed of my friends, declined to be so sworn and returned to 
their homes. I went as a private into the Pottstown com- 
pany among strangers. 

It is certainly remarkable that a boy should leave his 
quiet country home and within a few days' march, as it 
were, direct to Gettysburg, not only the pivotal point of 
that tremendous conflict, but the scene of the most important 
events in all American history. 

It seems almost as though there were a fatality which 
determined that affairs should so be shaped. If my own 
company had not gone home, I should not have been in the 
regiment which went to Gettysburg, and I would have 
experienced nothing of consequence. The Pottstown 
company had decided to connect themselves with another 
regiment in the camp, and only after much persuasion and 
considerable delay were prevailed upon by Colonel Jennings 
to change their association and unite with him. Had they 
not made this change I should not have gone to Gettysburg. 
The delay was likewise essential. The regiments were sent 
forward as organized, each going further to the southward 
than its predecessor. If Colonel Jennings had succeeded 
94 



THE WAR 

with the Pottstown company at the outset, his regiment 
would have been filled and he would have taken the place 
part way up the valley to which Colonel Thomas' regiment 
was sent. We constituted the first and one of eight regi- 
ments sworn into the service of the United States for the 
existing emergency. We were the only body of troops 
during the entire war which entered the military service of 
the Government for a period of uncertain duration, and, with 
Lee invading the state, that period might well have extended 
into the indefinite future. 

When we arrived at Gettysburg we found Major Gran- 
ville O.Haller, of the United States Army, in command there, 
and the only force at his disposal was our regiment. On the 
other side of the mountain in the Cumberland Valley, not 
ten miles away, was Lee with the Army of Northern Virginia. 
Rodes, being in the advance, marched toward Harrisburg 
to carry the war into the heart of the state and possibly to 
Philadelphia. Early, with a division — artillery, cavalry 
and infantry — was sent over the mountain by the Chambers- 
burg pike to Gettysburg. On the 26th of June, in the early 
morning, in obedience to the order of Major Haller, we 
marched out the Chambersburg Pike to confront the 
approaching host. To this regiment of seven hundred and 
thirty-two men who had left their homes only a few days 
before, unacquainted with their officers and comrades, and 
unfamiliar with the ways of warfare, was assigned the task 
of stopping the progress of the army of Lee. The order 
has often been criticised, but it was absolutely correct. The 
occasion required that what they were capable of doing, 
whether much or little, should be done. The reports of 
Early show that they held back his division an entire day. 
On the Hunterstown Road we had an engagement with the 
rebels lasting over half an hour in which we lost some 
wounded and one hundred and seventy-six men captured. 
The rebel general, John B. Gordon, in his reminiscences of 
the Civil War, calls it a ''Diminutive Battle" and claims 

95 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

that because of it he gained knowledge of great value to him 
and his cause in the coming contest. After encountering 
the enemy on the Chambersburg Pike, and again at Dills- 
burg, after escaping threatened capture, the regiment, by- 
hard marches across a country filled with foes, found its way 
to Harrisburg. The men had lost all of their baggage and 
equipments. From Friday morning until Saturday night 
they had been without food, and until Sunday afternoon 
almost without rest. They had fired the first shots and 
drawn the first blood upon the battlefield of Gettysburg. 
Students of the history of the war have been attracted by 
the unique relation of the regiment to that decisive battle 
and some of them have regarded it as an essential factor. 
Circular No. 8, Series of 1894, of the Loyal Legion of the 
United States, says: "It was the only emergency regiment 
which participated in that decisive battle of the war and it 
is an historical fact that owing to the advance movement of 
Colonel Jennings' regiment, Gettysburg became the battle 
ground." 

Spear, in his The North and the South, after pointing 
out that the coming of a scout with news of the approach of 
Meade did not lead to the concentration of Lee's army, as 
Lee wrote, for the reason that the order was given at 7.30 
A. M. on June 28th, and the scout did not arrive until the 
night of that day, declares that the concentration was the 
result of our combat on the 26th of June. He says, page 
97 : ''It was the beginning of a series of events which colored 
and determined all the issues of this campaign in a military 
sense. This regiment was as unconscious of the resultant 
consequences of its action as was Lee himself. It was one 
of those insignificant events that so often are the important 
factors in great results." 

On the wall at Pennypacker's Mills there hang together 
the knapsack I carried, the shoes I wore, a broken 
carbine made in Richmond in 1862 and picked up at 
the scene of our conflict, and a ramrod I found in a 
96 



THE WAR 

rebel camp a few days later at Chambersburg on our way 
to join Meade. 

The bronze figure of a young man clutching a musket, 
who has just run up upon the top of a native boulder, stands 
at the point where the Chambersburg Pike leaves the town 
of Gettysburg to commemorate the services of the regiment.* 
The names of those enrolled on it, cut in a bronze tablet, 
will be placed in the Pennsylvania Memorial on the battle- 
field before the close of the present year. 

When I returned home, I was at once drafted. I had no 
idea of returning to the service in this way and my grand- 
father, who was much pleased with the outcome of my 
military experience, paid $300 for a substitute at Norristown 
only too willing to go to the front in my stead. I do not 
know of his name or his fate. 

In the fall of 1863 I went to Philadelphia and boarded 
with a Miss Mary Whitehead on Chestnut Street below 
Fifth, where my Uncle Joseph had two rooms. We had a 
wood stove in the back room, the wood for which I threw 
into the cellar from Chestnut Street and there cut into 
pieces. Right opposite to us was the office of The Age, a 
newspaper which represented the Copperhead proclivities 
then gaining strength over the North. One of its witti- 
cisms I recall; *'A Union League is three miles from any 
battlefield." Richard Vaux, who had been mayor of the 
city, and in his youth had danced with Queen Victoria, 
pointed out as the man who never wore an overcoat or 
carried an umbrella, and who kept a long beard tucked 
away under his clothing, also found a Union League 
obnoxious. He made it a point of conduct never to walk in 
the square in which this club had its quarters. Perhaps 
the most conspicuous and at the same time the most disliked 
of those regarded as Copperheads in the city were Wilham 
B. Reed and Charles IngersoU. Both of them were lawyers. 

* It was Governor Pennypacker who Buggested that the statue should show the trousers 
tucked into the boot-legs to indicate the sudden change from peaceful life to the battlefield. 

7 97 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Reed, smooth-faced and intellectual, had been district 
attorney and Minister to China; an old-line Whig, become 
a Democrat at the most inopportune time. With a lack of 
financial judgment, which has characterized the whole 
family from the time of its origin, he deserves appreciation 
for his literary attainments and for the fact that we owe to 
him the earliest of the real biographies of the Revolution. 
He lost his practice, his money and his social position, and, 
drifting to New York, died in poverty as a writer on the 
New York World. Ingersoll, a tall, slim figure, with dark 
eyes and a long neck, wore a stock and a collar five or six 
inches wide. His manner was courtly, but ever suggested 
idiosyncracy. While crossing the ocean some years later, 
he died and was buried at sea. Time and again from my 
room on Chestnut Street I watched S, psychological phe- 
nomenon characteristic of the time and illustrating the 
prevailing temper. The billboards at the newspaper offices 
announced a defeat or check which had happened to one of 
our armies and the hurrying newsboys cried aloud the 
disheartening event. Instantaneously almost, an angry 
crowd gathered. With a common impulse, and with stones, 
bits of iron or whatever could be grasped, broke in the doors 
and windows and destroyed the property of The Age. 

One of the features of the time was the provost guards 
who tramped the town, and I have seen them firing upon a 
fugitive at the corner of Sixth and Chestnut streets in the 
very heart of the city. Courtland Saunders, my old school- 
mate in West Philadelphia, who went out as a captain in 
the CorUvExchange Regiment, met his death within a very 
few days at Shepherdstown. Another playmate of my 
boyhood, J. Henry Workman, with whom I have maintained 
a friendship all through life, joined the cavalry regiment 
known as Rush's Lancers, and before they left for the front 
I saw him a number of times in camp in the northern part 
of the city. While away he wrote me many letters of army 
life which I still preserve. He became a captain, but had a 
98 



THE WAR 

sad experience. All of his family were in the South and 
rebels, and in one of his campaigns he came unexpectedly 
upon the grave of his brother, killed in the Southern army. 
Taken prisoner, he was confined for a time in Libby Prison. 
On his return home, at the close of the war, he became a 
member of the important shipping firm of Workman & Co. 
But a grievous wound upon the head brings recurrent 
attacks of mental excitement and his life given to his 
country has been a continuous sacrifice. 

He has lived long enough, however, to see later genera- 
tions teach the doctrine that it makes no difference whether 
men were right or wrong in that tremendous struggle, and 
erect statues to Wirz in Georgia and Lee in Washington. 
The logic of the instruction is that should the nation again 
incur danger, let each youth fight upon whichever side is 
most to his interest and trust his fame to confusion of 
thought and chance. 

In 1864, the same year that I saw McClellan ride on 
horseback through the town, a fair for the benefit of the 
United States Sanitary Commission was held in Logan 
Square. The proceeds netted over a million dollars. Emily 
Schomberg, regarded by the men as the most beautiful 
creature in the city and decried by the women as being no 
longer as young as she had been, told the fortunes, by palm- 
istry, of those who sought the opportunity, at five dollars a 
piece. I agreed with the masculine judgment as to her 
beauty. She was over the average height, slim, with dark 
eyes and much richness of color. She recalled the houries of 
the Arabian Nights and of Lalla Rookh. Her talents as 
well as accomplishments were extraordinary. I saw her 
many times on the street and at entertainments, and on one 
occasion was present when a play was given in a private 
theater on Seventeenth Street in which she and Daniel 
Dougherty took the leading parts. Rumor had it that 
she rejected fifty suitors on the average every year. She 
finally married an Enghshman, of minor rank in the army 

99 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

and little personal consequence, and her later career was not 
altogether happy. The male beauty with somewhat similar 
points who played havoc with the hearts of the society buds 
of the period was a son of Dr. Leonard R. Koecker, a Walnut 
Street dentist. I have sometimes wondered what became 
of him. 

At the fair I saw again Abraham Lincoln, who had come 
from Washington to participate. 

Having gone to the camp at West Chester to bid farewell 
to my friends in Company G of the First Pennsylvania 
Reserves, when they started forth in 1861, I went to the 
Cooper Shop and Volunteer Refreshment Saloon to see those 
who survived fed on their way home — bronzed and experi- 
enced veterans in 1864. White, Armitage, Bradley and many 
more were not among them. Their captain, John R. Dob- 
son, still a captain after three years of service, soon became 
a major-general of militia. 

One morning in April, 1865, the news came that Mr. 
Lincoln had been assassinated the night before, at Ford's 
Theatre in Washington, by one of a band of rebel plotters, 
and attempts had been made upon the lives of members of 
his cabinet. No such event had ever before occurred in 
America. Its effect was to arouse all the undercurrent of 
animal passions. Along with the warm glow of love for one 
who had been so gentle, considerate and wise, arose the 
desire to tear into pieces those who had harmed him. Per- 
sonally I felt that I wanted to set my teeth in the throat 
of some rebel and that the inability to gratify the impulse 
was a deprivation. In a remarkable way the war revealed 
to men how thin is the gloss of civilization and how below 
seethe the primary passions which have ever swayed them. 

Perched on the roof of a building on south Broad Street, 
the catafalque that bore his body passed before me and 
thousands of others and the next morning I arose early to go 
to Independence Hall. Forming in line, we walked two by 
two along the north side of Chestnut Street from Fifth Street 
100 



THE WAR 

to the Delaware River and there crossed over to the south 
side of Chestnut and after hours reached Fifth, only to find 
that there the line had been broken up by the undisciplined 
crowd. Not to be balked, I fought my way with some of the 
more fortunate to the hall where the body lay in state, and 
so it happened that I saw Lincoln both upon the first and the 
last time that he came to the Pennsylvania State House. 

In my early days, in every community existed what was 
called a literary society, composed of young men who there 
experienced themselves in the arts of composition, declama- 
tion and debate. With such facilities as they afforded, many 
a youth strengthened himself for the later and perhaps more 
serious combats of life. They seem now to have been 
abandoned and if so it is a distinctive loss. At home I had 
belonged to and been president of the Young Men's Literary 
Union. In the city a number of such organizations were 
doing their work. In 1864 I hunted up and joined the 
Bancroft Literary Society, named for the historian who had 
given it a set of his works. At this time, or very soon there- 
after, I formed the acquaintance among its members of 
Frank K. Sheppard, a Democrat, on the editorial staff of 
the Ledger; Joel Cook, likewise connected as correspondent 
with the Ledger, who had written a book on the McClellan 
Campaign on the James, also a Democrat, who afterwards 
grew rich and became a Republican member of congress; 
W. A. Sliver, a long, white-haired declaimer, who afterward 
went on to the stage under the name of Marsden, married, 
and finally killed himself; Nathaniel K. Richardson, who 
had a great gift as an elocutionist ; Jerome Carty, who came 
to the bar and whose career, like that of the swallow of the 
ancient Bede, came into the light of the hall for a while, but 
began in darkness and ended in darkness; John I. Rogers, 
related to my Irish friends on Tunnel Hill, who made money 
at the bar and as president of the Philadelphia Base Ball 
Club, and became a colonel on the staff of Governor Pattison; 
Chester N. Farr, a brainy fellow who became private secre- 

101 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

tary to two governors — Hartranft and Hoyt — and John 
Sword, who, after editing some law books with great ability, 
entered the Church, became a devotee and has given his life 
to celibacy, charity and genuflexions. 

I also met there Alfred Rochefort Calhoun, a Steerforth, 
in another line of life, who had temporarily considerable 
influence over all brought into contact with him. As a 
character, he forms an unsolvable but interesting study. 
About five feet nine inches in height, mth black hair and 
blue eyes, with muscles hard as iron, measuring forty-six 
inches around the chest, he had a ball in his lungs, the healed 
gash of a sabre cut across his hand and he walked with a 
limp upon an artificial foot. Few ventured to compete with 
him in strength of will or of muscle. He had a gift of fiery 
oratory which appealed to the passions, and sjinpathy 
went out to one who bore the evidence of many a combat in 
the war, so that it was difficult for either man or woman to 
resist him. He had the title, and presumably the rank, of 
major. The slightest provocation found him ready to fight. 
Any indication of sympathy with the South angered him, 
and I have heard him bring more than one discussion to an 
end by calling his opponent "a damned liar." At this 
time the road to political preferment was through service in 
the war, and about this time the Grand Army of the Republic 
was organized. Among the old soldiers, none had greater 
influence than Calhoun, and he commanded Post 19 and 
later became Department Commander of the Grand Army 
in the State. A friend of Bayard Taylor, who gave him an 
autograph copy of the translation of Goethe's Faust, he had 
the Post named for Colonel Charles Frederick Taylor, who 
was killed at Gettysburg. He ^vrote a play called "The 
Color Guard" which became popular and is still enacted 
for the benefit of the Posts. He was accepted on terms of 
relationship among the descendants of the South Carolina 
Calhouns, and he told me he was also related to Sir Roderick 
Murchison, president of the Royal Geographical Society, 
102 



THE WAR 

with whom he corresponded and who saw to the publication 
of some of his articles in European magazines. I spent a 
couple of days with him at Cedarcraft, where Bayard Taylor 
entertained us, although the poet spent most of his time in 
discussing his Picture of St. John, just published, and in 
painting a picture in oil on which he was then working. 
Calhoun invited me to a luncheon which he gave to one of 
the daughters of Governor Curtin. He started A. Wilson 
Norris, afterward Auditor General of the State, upon his 
career, giving him the opportunity to make his first public 
address. Grant, when President, appointed Calhoun 
Pension Agent in Philadelphia, in which office he had to give 
a bond in $600,000. Among his bondsmen were Ario Pardee, 
Simon Cameron, John F. Hartranft, Bayard Taylor, and I 
persuaded my grandfather to go upon it for $30,000. I 
attended to the preparation of the bond and together Cal- 
houn and I saw Simon Cameron at his home in Harrisburg, 
a white-haired, erect old man, who blandly signed the paper 
to the extent of $50,000 without the faintest suggestion of 
any sort of return or obHgation. Men began to say that 
Calhoun would be the next Republican candidate for 
Governor. Then trouble began. Norris became a bitter 
enemy. Captain Singer, who had been to him an obedient 
and even servile Achates, quarreled with him about a woman 
and Singer married her. Cameron withdrew from the bond 
and Calhoun was compelled to find other security. It began 
to be whispered that his name was not Calhoun, that he had 
never been in the Union army, that he was a rebel spy 
among the prisoners in Libby. The Grand Army expelled 
him from its ranks and he retired to Georgia, where he edited 
a fiery paper and again encountered troubles. Many years 
later he lived in New York and wrote stories for the period- 
icals. I leave him as one of the mysteries I have encountered 
in life and as a reminiscence of the great struggle. 

Somebody suggested the idea of holding a convention of 
the literary societies of the city. As president of the Ban- 

103 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

croft, I was sent as a delegate and with me were Rogers, 
Farr and Calhoun. When this convention met on Spring 
Garden Street, there appeared, asking admission, a delega- 
tion from the Banneker Institute, a society of colored men 
in the lower part of the city, at the head of which was a 
very light and very bright negro named Octavius V. Catto. 
The times were not ripe and it was like casting a firebrand. 
In the midst of a fierce discussion the convention adjourned. 
All of our delegation except Rogers favored the admission of 
the negroes. He succeeded in getting our society to pass a 
resolution instructing us to vote against their admission. 
We informed the society we would not so vote. They then 
passed a resolution vacating our seats and appointing 
another delegation. We denied their right and appeared 
before the convention, where we had had a majority. The 
situation had, however, in the meantime changed. A man 
in town named A. B. Sloanaker, a fat, oily pohtician, when 
Andrew Johnson quarreled with his party and apparently 
had friends nowhere, took to him a basket of wax flowers 
ostensibly from the schools of Philadelphia, and Johnson 
thereupon appointed him Collector of Internal Revenue 
in New Orleans. Hence he received the sobriquet of "Wax 
Work Sloany." This gentleman improved the period of 
adjournment by organizing literary societies all over the 
city, and when again the convention met the hall was filled 
with delegates. We were refused admission and the Ban- 
neker delegates likewise. I saw much of Catto, who was 
an intelligent school teacher. He was afterwards murdered, 
losing his life in another effort to advance his race. 

Through Calhoun I became a member of Post 19 and 
in 1869 was elected its commander, thus attaining the rank 
in the Grand Army of a colonel. I delivered Decoration 
Day orations at Laurel Hill, Christ Church-yard and 
Kennett Square, and in May of 1870 rode at the head of 
seven hundred men to Mount Moriah Cemetery and con- 
ducted the ceremonies. With this service such connection 
104 



THE WAR 

as I had with the war may be said to have ceased. I have? 
however, maintained my relations with the Post, and a few 
years ago its members presented me with a handsome 
decoration as Post Commander. 



105 



CHAPTER V 
The PmLADELPfflA Bar 

WHEN a stranger for the first time met Peter 
McCall, the strongest impression made upon 
him was that he confronted a man instinctively 
a gentleman, and this impression grew with 
each succeeding interview. A descendant of George McCall, 
a merchant in Philadelphia in the early colonial period who 
owned McCalFs Manor at Manatawny, he had a thin, 
Celtic face, refined by long time and, perhaps, cross-breeding, 
with pronounced lips and chin. Slim, perhaps five feet eight 
inches in height, he possessed a certain power of oratorial 
speech and much latent combativeness. He had been 
mayor of the city. He had been a professor of law in the 
University of Pennsylvania. Often nominated for a judge- 
ship in the court of common pleas by the minority party, 
he each time failed of election, but no man could have been 
better fitted for the office. When clients were about to 
leave his inner room after a closed interview, with the 
sweetest courtesy of manner he escorted them to the outer 
door. With timid visitors at his home, he broached one 
topic of conversation after another until he discovered the 
subject in which they were interested or informed, and then 
he sat and silently hstened. Coming of a family of social 
importance, whose members had participated in the dancing 
assemblies from their beginning, having inherited what he 
once described to me as "a little patrimony," holding a 
position at the bar, everywhere recognized as close to the 
top, he had nevertheless encountered some of the adverse 
currents of life. He married a Southern woman, a descendant 
of General Hugh Mercer who w^as killed at Princeton. She 
106 



THE PHILADELPHIA BAR 

looked well enough and lived long, but she was either an 
invalid or a case of disordered nerves. The sympathy 
accorded by a husband to supposed illness is a great leverage 
and she influenced htm in many ways to his disadvantage. 
She wanted the comparatively greater importance of the 
Mercers to be conceded. She prevailed upon him to move 
away from the house in which he had always lived to a more 
healthful locality. I know of no greater misfortune that can 
happen to the career of a man of ability than to be out of sym- 
pathy with his own people in a fateful crisis in which they 
are right. Mr. McCall had been a Whig and had become a 
Democrat. Throughout the war his wife openly avowed 
her hope for the success of the Southern cause, and he was 
frequently denounced as a Copperhead. He never men- 
tioned the subject, but when he failed to be re-elected to the 
vestry of St. Peter's Church, with which he had long been 
connected, and when his clients began to drop away and the 
students, who before had striven to enter his office, forsook 
him, intelligent and sensitive, he felt the change keenly. 
At the time I entered his office, the warmth of feeling 
existing at the outset of the war had somewhat abated and 
the genuine respect for Mr. McCall had begun to revive. 

I reached the offices, No. 224 South Fourth Street, on 
the west side of Fourth Street below Walnut, in the early 
morning. They consisted of two large rooms on the ground 
floor. No one else had yet arrived. Securing a book, I 
selected a large and comfortable chair, drew it to the front 
window and began my studies. Presently a tall young man 
with dark whiskers entered, and coming over to me said: 
"It is a custom in this office that the oldest student occupies 
that chair and I will thank you to give it to me." I sur- 
rendered it with due meekness and had received my first 
lesson in discipline. The young gentleman was named J. 
Duross O'Brien, an earnest, good-hearted and agreeable 
fellow. His aunt, a prosperous milliner, educated him. 
The old-time ways still prevailed in the office and the stu- 

107 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

dents were expected to run errands and to respond when 
called upon for any sort of manual assistance. Instead of 
mailing his letters, Mr. McCall would say in his blandest 

manner: ''Mr. , I wish that on your way home this 

evening you will be good enough to deliver these letters." 
Once O'Brien said to him by way of protest: "Mr. McCall, 
is it the custom for students in a lawyer's office to carry 
letters?" ''I think it is, Mr. O'Brien," and thereafter 
whenever a letter was deliverable at any unusual distance, 
this particular student was pretty sure to get it. Some- 
times he stayed away for days to avoid the letters, but these 
tactics were met by accumulation. Once O'Brien, who was 
not altogether refined, stood before Mr. McCall, who was the 
expression of delicate and perfect culture, being instructed 
upon some subject. In his pocket was a box of matches 
ready for the after-lunch cigar. In his pocket was also his 
hand fumbling the matches. Suddenly they were ignited. 
"Damn it to hell!" ejaculated O'Brien. He afterward 
went out to New Mexico, where I believe he achieved 
considerable success. 

With Edward S. Harlan, student of a different type, I 
established a warm and lasting friendship. Lame in one 
foot, nature more than made up for the defect by giving 
him a handsome, strong face adorned with a graceful mus- 
tache. He had a good heart and a nimble wit. Once some 
one was endeavoring to twit me with being a countryman 
and inquired: "Do the people live in houses in that section 
of the state?" "The chiefs do," interjected Harlan. He 
died only too early of angina pectoris, which he bore with 
the utmost patience, and left an attractive daughter, who 
married Samuel Wagner. Charles M. Walton, a scion of 
one of the Quaker families of the state, fond of literature and 
appreciating its beauties with correct taste, a friend of 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, who often visited him, was also 
reading law at the time. Entirely too gentle and possessing 
too much sensibility to meet the buffets which he encounters 
108 



THE PHILADELPHIA BAR 

who enters upon the practice of the law, he was beloved by- 
all who knew hun and soon died. 

Of another mold was S. Davis Page, who harked back 
to the Byrds of Westover and other noted Virginia families. 
He had married and gone to Europe to escape the animosities 
which had to be borne by those of Southern sympathies in 
the early days of the war, but had returned to complete his 
studies. His studies had been too much interrupted to 
enable him to become profoundly learned in the law, but he 
had no intention of being set aside, and life had much in store 
for him. He secured a fair practice and contended on behalf 
of his clients pugnaciously. He entered politics on the 
Democratic side, sat in the city councils and became city 
treasurer. His social success was pronounced and his son, 
William Byrd Page, in his day, at the University of Pennsyl- 
vania, held the world's record for high jumping. 

A httle later John Sword came into the office. He had 
great aptitude for the law and was besides a close student. 
Mr. McCall thought so well of him that he took him, after 
admission to the bar, into some of his cases. Sword, after 
editing some volumes of reports, abandoned the law and, as 
I have written, became a devotee. He went to Oxford 
University and, entering the ministry, appeared later as the 
highest of high church Episcopalians. His life thereafter 
was spent in genuflexions and self-abnegation. Fond of the 
society of women, he refused marriage. Attracting the 
attention of Mrs. Paran Stevens, a wealthy widow, she 
wanted to do much for him, but he sought work in the 
slums and among the poor and the lowly. He left 
the courts literally to fall upon his knees. Life is filled 
with strange contrasts. Before my time, Mr. McCall had a 
pet student, who married well, lived well, held his head high 
in society and in the end robbed the estates entrusted to 
him, forged mortgages and ran away to a remote country, 
disappearing in the darkness. 

Among the students, I was the only one who had not 

109 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

graduated from some college, but three months had not 
gone by before they all habitually came to me for help when 
they were puzzled over the Norman French of Littleton and 
the Latin citations of the law books. I went to the office 
sometimes as early as six o'clock in the mornings. When 
the rest went away for their vacations in the summer, I had 
the office to myself. I read the course prescribed, and very 
much more — the whole of Coke's Commentaries on Littleton, 
the three volumes of Addison on Contracts, Fearne on 
Remainders, Sugden on Vendors, Sugden on Powers and I 
dabbled in the Year Books. One hot summer day I sat with 
a book in a comfortable old Spanish chair at the window of 
the back room. Presently some one appeared at the door. 
I thought it was a tramp, the room being somewhat dark- 
ened, and I went on with my reading. The intruder came 
slowly over to my chair and said: "Will you kindly tell Mr. 
McCall, when he returns, that Joseph R. Ingersoll called 
and that no one arose to receive him?" Then he turned on 
his heel. The situation was uncomfortable, for Mr. McCall 
held him in the highest respect, and so had my father who 
corresponded with him. 

An Irish woman named Margaret took care of the 
offices. She had a son, Willie, about sixteen years of age, 
an only child, who grieved her heart by hunting up wild 
companions and getting drunk. Ashenfelter, who had been 
in the office a short time with me, suddenly concluded to go 
on a sailing vessel around Cape Horn, and at the suggestion 
of Mr. McCall, Willie went with him. Margaret sadly let 
him go, and at the last moment tying a crucifix around his 
throat told him never to take it off. In a storm off the Rio 
de la Plata, Wilhe, for some purpose, went to the prow of 
the vessel and was washed overboard and lost. He had 
removed the crucifix and it lay on the deck. I still have it, 
and his poor mother never knew this part of the tragedy. 

At that time the method of training law^'ers for the work 
of the profession was to have the student read upon the 
110 



THE PHILADELPHIA BAR 

subject in the office of a practicing attorney and under his 
direction, and to have his progress ascertained by occasional 
examinations. The reading was confined almost exclusively 
to dissertations upon the law and text-books and there was 
little or no reference to particular cases. A principle was 
affirmed and if a case was cited it was as an elucidation of 
that principle. The judges were presumed to have known 
it and to have decided accordingly. The modern doctrine 
of the creation of law by the decisions of courts and the con- 
sequent importance of the study of cases had either not 
arisen or was only in its incipiency. In Mr. McCall's office 
we learned nothing of causes and I have many a time won- 
dered what I should do if perchance in the future an actual 
case should ever come to me. 

While I was with him, Mr. McCall gave up his home, 
took his family, or was taken by them, to the western part 
of the city and removed his offices to a two-story brick 
building on the east side of Fourth Street. It illustrates 
the relation of his students to him that they carried in 
baskets all of his large library and the other necessary 
articles to the new location. The relation to the client was 
also quite different from that which we now see, and instead 
of being a mere matter of business was in part at least 
friendly and paternal. One of Mr. McCall's clients, a httle 
old man, to whom he showed marked attention, called 
Joseph Andrade, always with each Christmas brought him a 
turkey. Once I hardily went to him and said : "Mr. McCall, 
I want to read the works of Spinoza and DesCartes and they 
are not in the Mercantile Library where I have a share; 
could I get them from the Philadelphia Library on your 
share?" 

He was deeply rehgious and probably felt that he ought 
not to encourage a young man in dipping into that sort of 
philosophy. At all events, he did not assent. I read the 
books, nevertheless, and added to them Locke, Hamilton, 
Hobbes, Hume and Spencer. 

Ill 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Through one summer I boarded in a Pennsylvania Dutch 
hotel, on the east side of Third Street near Callowhill, 
patronized alone by the clerks of merchants and by farmers 
coming into town. It was an interesting experience. I had 
a little room in the third story with one small window, a bed, 
a bowl and basin on a rough stand, two Windsor chairs, a 
strip of rag carpet along the bed and no other furniture 
except a Jordan. In the dining-room we sat on stools at a 
long table. There were not, however, stools enough for all 
the guests, and as a result there had to be two services, and 
those who did not find a stool at the first opportunity must 
wait until the more fortunate were fed and another outfit 
was made ready. When the gong sounded the doors were 
thrown open, there was a rush for the stools in which men 
were jammed and clothes torn and when the stools were 
filled the doors were again closed. I met some young men 
here who succeeded in life and whose paths again crossed 
mine. On Sundays I went to Franklin Square and, sitting 
on a bench there, read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the 
Roman Empire. 

Ashenfelter, who had graduated at Dickinson College, 
had come to the city to read law, and together we rented the 
front room at No. 520 Spruce Street from a Mrs. Wilson, the 
widow of a newspaper editor. It was modest enough, but 
kept bright and cleanly, and the impression even today is 
one of luxurious enjoyment. We ate our meals at the 
boarding house of a Mrs. Lydia Foster on Sixth Street below 
Locust. We called it the "Foster Home." Into the 
boarding house had been swept by the tides of misfortune 
Ann Kittera, a daughter of the noted Congressman, John W. 
Kittera, and related to the family of Governor Simon Snyder. 
Her gentility of manner, her faded finery of clothing and 
the furrows on her withered cheeks all told the same tale, 
and unconsciously each one of the household showed to her 
respect and called her "Miss Ann." Three young men from 
among those who gathered at that inexpensive table, two 
112 



THE PHILADELPHIA BAR 

students of medicine and one of law, met together many 
years later as pall-bearers at the funeral of the famous 
surgeon, Dr. D. Hayes Agnew — Dr. Roland G. Curtin, 
Dr. De Forrest Willard and myself. Another boarder was 
John Thompson Spencer, then a student of law, who later 
married the only daughter of John William Wallace, one of 
my predecessors as president of the Historical Society of 
Pennsylvania, and who now entertains the European nobility 
when they come to Newport. With a Frenchman at the 
table, I began to talk French, and thereafter our conversa- 
tions were conducted solely in that language. 

About this time I made the acquaintance of J. Granville 
Leach, the son of a Baptist preacher at Cape May, who was 
reading law in the office of Byron Woodward. The resources 
of Leach, hke those of the rest of us, were narrow, and he 
slept in the office. Leach introduced me into the Law 
Academy and at his suggestion I, while yet a student, in 
1865, was elected its assistant secretary. I, therefore, owe 
to Leach my first professional recognition. Through two 
winters I attended the law lectures at the University of 
Pennsylvania by Judge George Sharswood, P. Pemberton 
Morris and E. Spencer Miller, paying to each of them sixty 
dollars for the two terms of the year. Miller had the repu- 
tation of being the least capable lawyer and the best lecturer. 
A nervous, combative little man, he had a practice which, it 
was supposed, netted him $30,000 a year and had made him 
rich. When he died he left nothing behind him in the way 
of an estate. Sharswood had one of those kindly dispositions 
which made everybody fond of him. With young men he 
was ever gentle, and late in life he afforded the pathetic 
spectacle of a father watching through the night for the 
incoming of an only son whose wildness and waywardness 
he ever condoned. He had no presence, no voice and a 
troubled utterance. He suffered much from a physical 
cause, and in the trial of cases paced slowly up and down 
behind the bench. Later he became Chief Justice of the 

8 113 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Commonwealth and after a career of great distinction, died 
universally esteemed and leaving his edition of Blackstone 
for the instruction of the profession. The lectures were 
delivered in the building on the west side of Ninth Street, 
north of Chestnut. When I was graduated as a Bachelor of 
Laws, we had no commencement save that I called, with 
others, and was given my diploma. 

I was admitted to the bar in May, 1866. On the Board 
of Examiners sat George W. Biddle and William Henry 
Rawle, among others, and John Cadwalader, Jr., acted as 
secretary. They made an entry on their minutes that I had 
passed the best examination which had come before them 
during their term, much to the delight of Mr. McCall as 
well as myself. Biddle, long regarded as the leader of the 
Bar, never forgot me and frequently recalled the impression 
of me then made. In the trial of cases he had a nervous 
habit of raising one hand and rubbing the back of it with the 
palm of the other, and he always spoke impressively. He 
had three sons, all of them lawyers, and it was his sad fate 
to see them all die in young manhood. 

It had cost my grandfather for my legal education, 
extending through two years and a half, in the midst of the 
high prices of the war, including $200 paid to my preceptor 
and $360 paid to the University professors, and including 
board and clothing, exactly $1,260. This sum he later 
forgave and probably never expected to reclaim. It ought 
to be added, however, that while I was a student the dis- 
covery of oil in Venango County led to tremendous specula- 
tion and the organization of oil companies in all directions. 
Robert R. Chrisman and other persons whom I happened 
to know secured some land, a charter for the Providence Oil 
Company, and proceeded to bore for oil and to sell their 
stock. They engaged me for two hours a day, at $12 a week, 
to keep their books and I remained with them four months 
and until the balance in the treasury had fallen to $3.67. 
I did some other work which helped my resources slightly. 
114 



THE PHILADELPHIA BAR 

At this time I frequently saw flourishing about the town 
a young man called "Coal Oil Johnnie." He came of a 
poor and uneducated family, in the western part of the 
state, who for generations had wrung a scanty subsistence 
from an infertile soil. Suddenly oil in quantities was found 
under their feet and he became rich to profusion. He came 
to the city to scatter his wealth, gave out ten dollar bills 
and disdained to take the change, bought a team of horses 
and tiring of them gave them to his hostler, and built an 
opera house in Cincinnati. Ere long he earned a livelihood 
by acting as doorkeeper for this opera house. 

The bruit of my successful examination spreading 
around to some extent, I was offered a position in three 
different offices — those of E, Spencer Miller, Daniel Dough- 
erty and Frederick Heyer — at a salary which varied from 
$600 to $800 a year, but I concluded it was better to depend 
upon my own exertions, and I rented the front room at 705 
Walnut street from George L. Crawford. His clients passed 
through my office and I had the great pleasure of seeing 
them daily go by me in numbers. He was a competent 
lawyer. He had a little bronchial cough, and he prepared 
and tried the cases which came to Benjamin Harris Brewster. 
The latter, at that time, was one of the remarkable char- 
acters at the bar. He had been badly burned in childhood 
and the accident left his face not only ugly but repulsive, 
since the eyeball was exposed, the lids reddened, the face 
distorted and the lips thickened into rolls. If this condition 
of countenance made him sensitive he gave, in manner, no 
indication of the fact. I have heard women say that, when 
they listened to his words and voice, they forgot all about his 
features and he was twice married, the last time to a daughter 
of Robert J. Walker, once Secretary of the Treasury. He 
wore a velvet coat, a light vest, a stock, and ruffles at the 
end of his shirt sleeves. Late in life he became Attorney 
General of the United States. He had a gift of oratory and 
a touch of charlatanry and once was taken in to argue a case 

115 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

before me as master, and knowing nothing whatever about 
the circumstances of the cause, he occupied an hour or two in 
talking about the solemnity of a seal to a deed. He always 
maintained a hostile attitude towards his brother. Judge F. 
Carroll Brewster, who, more able and less candid, was 
Attorney General of Pennsylvania. 

While sitting in my office, one day, I heard an unusual 
noise in Crawford's room. When I hastened inside I saw a 
very thin man wildly ejaculating in front of a table and 
whacking away with his cane at the head of Crawford, who 
struggled to arise from a chair on the other side. Approach- 
ing from the rear, I caught the intruder around the waist, 
lifted him from his feet, carried him through my room to the 
street, and there deposited him on the front door step. He 
turned out to be Major S. B. Wylie Mitchell, the founder of 
the Loyal Legion. 

When I entered the Law Academy, a bright, vigorous 
young man, who had taken an active part in its affairs, 
named John G. Johnson, a few years older than myself, was 
about leaving it to meet the broader requirements of life. 
The son of a blacksmith, without means, he held no college 
diploma, and he began his career with no advantages of any 
kind to give him help. Save that he would occasionally go 
to see a game of baseball and that he developed a taste for 
and acquired a knowledge of paintings in oil and made an 
important collection, he has devoted himself exclusively to 
the practice of the law, permitting nothing to tempt him 
aside. He did indeed once write an historical pamphlet on 
what was then called ''The Wars of the Grandfathers," 
being a controversy between George Bancroft and the 
descendants of several of the generals of the Revolution 
over the respective merits of these officers, but he has ever 
kept silence upon the subject and the fact is not generally 
known. It is universally conceded that he is today the 
leader of the Philadelphia bar and one of the foremost 
lawyers of the United States. He has acquired a large 
116 



THE PHILADELPHIA BAR 

fortune, having expended, according to reports, over a 
million dollars for his pictures. From the meetings, dinners, 
and clubs of the profession, he is always absent, and he takes 
no part in the bar associations or even in those efforts 
intended for professional advancement and improvement. 
His success at the bar has been due to physical and mental 
power rather than to cultivation. There is a little of coarse- 
ness, a little of hardness in his fiber, and he is not much 
given to sentiment in any direction, but he works at the law 
from early in the morning until late at night, and when he 
arises to argue or to try a case, the court, the jury, the 
lawyers and the tipstaves all give attention. 

I took my part in the arguments at the Law Academy, 
was elected secretary for the year 1866, and then discovered 
that I had taken the wrong road for advancement. I have 
found as I have gone through life that the "rings, " for which 
we blame the politicians, arise naturally and are to be found 
everjrvvhere. A little clique of cultivated men conducted the 
affairs of the Law Academy. From time whereof the mem- 
ory of man runneth not to the contrary, an unbroken custom 
has decreed that he who had filled the office of prothonotary 
for one year should, if he so desired, be elected the president 
for the following year. At this time J. Vaughan Darling, in 
the office of Richard C. McMurtrie, who later went to 
Wilkes-Barre and there won success and died, held the 
position of prothonotary and superintended the serious 
labor of preparing all of the cases to be argued during the 
winter's sessions. Very innocently, with an inborn sense of 
personal superiority, I endeavored to take a part in the 
management and found myself against a stone wall. One 
evening in the course of a speech I used the word ''gentle- 
man." Darling, in a supercilious way in reply, said that 
"Mr. Pennypacker will find that his ideas and ours of what 
constitute a gentleman are quite different." The remark 
cost him the presidency. The membership of the Academy 
had felt such things before, were ready for revolt, and only 

117 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

needed a leader. I organized a rebellion which proved to 
be a revolution. William White Wiltbank, a great-grandson 
of Bishop White, who had been out in the war and who had 
written a paper for the Atlantic Monthly, who years later 
sat on the Bench with me, and who, for some reason, was a 
persona non grata, helped in the movement. We selected as 
a candidate for the presidency James Lanman Harmar, a 
very able man, a grandson of General Josiah Harmar of the 
Revolutionary Army, and I ran with him for the vice- 
presidency. Samuel S. Hollingsworth made the speeches 
and I led the opposing forces. Harmar was elected over 
Darling, but was drowned at Bar Harbor before he had 
taken his seat and I became the president, a reward which 
ordinarily would have gone, and ought to have gone, to 
Darling. 

Hollingsworth and I became fast friends. Of Quaker 
ancestry, with dark eyes and stocky in build, combative in 
temperament, with the power to think accurately, he never 
flinched in a struggle, and he was one of those few men who 
never say anything but the truth, even though it be uncom- 
plimentary and said in the presence of the person concerned. 
He went into councils and did good service in the improve- 
ment of affairs, moving around with the boys while at the 
same time retaining his association with the gentry. A few 
years later, as a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, 
it was my fortune to aid in selecting him for a professorship 
in that institution. It was his hope to reach the Supreme 
Court of the United States, but in the very prime of life, 
while rugged as an oak, he died of typhoid fever. Since 
experience only comes with long exercise of the faculties, 
and since in a dull world time is required to gain an apprecia- 
tion of merit, the gift of long life is one of the essentials of 
any real success. 

When I came to the bar, Horace Binney could occa- 
sionally be seen upon the street, but he had long retired from 
practice. William M. Meredith could be heard at rare 
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THE PHILADELPHIA BAR 

intervals in the courts. George M. Wharton, a small, wiry 
and acute man, had a good clientele. Henry Wharton, 
round and robust, gave opinions upon real estate titles, 
there being then no real estate title companies. Eli K. Price, 
in his canny way, was heaping up a fortune. David Paul 
Brown, trim in a blue coat with brass buttons, rather fluent 
than wise, seldom appeared. The real leaders of the Bar 
were George W. Biddle, to whom I have before referred, 
and Richard C. McMurtrie. McMurtrie, pure and sincere, 
perhaps excelled in case-learning any other lawyer at the 
bar. In temperament he had the simplicity of a child, 
and in his mental conduct he suggested an overgrown boy. 
Whatever thought came to his head found its way to his 
tongue. He really felt that no one else knew much about 
the subject and he gave utterance to the thought. Once 
we had a case together and he inquired in which common 
pleas court it had been docketed. When I named the 
court he said: ''Oh, those poor, helpless creatures!" At 
another time he said to me: "If I raise some shellbark 
trees for you, will you plant them?" I promised to take 
care of them and some time later he brought them in a 
basket to my office. He once told Judge Fell that a certain 
lawyer was a fool. Some days later he came in a penitent 
mood to say: "Judge, do you know it is I who was the fool." 
He was a most unsafe adviser for the reason that he was 
ever constructing theories to which the affairs of the world 
refused to conform, but he was a lovable character and his 
steadfast adherence to the truth aided him much in the 
trial of causes. 

At the criminal bar Lewis C. Cassidy and William B. 
Mann stood foremost, until succeeded by James H. Heverin 
and Charles W. Brooke. When the Republicans were 
successful William B. Mann prosecuted the causes and 
Cassidy defended them, and when the Democrats were 
successful the situation was exactly reversed. Cassidy, a 
tall, dark, handsome man, possessed real eloquence. I 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

believe he never had a client convicted of murder in the 
first degree, a fact which can probably be explained by his 
refusal to take a desperate case likely to result in that way. 
When the Independent Republicans refused to vote for 
General James A. Beaver for Governor and caused the 
election of the Democrat, Robert E. Pattison, that gentle- 
man made Cassidy his Attorney General. 

For Mann I had almost a sense of horror. He had a 
burly frame, a furtive eye and great political power. My 
feeling toward him arose in this way. A man named George 
W. Winnemore, a spiritualistic dreamer, killed, in a bar- 
barous manner, a woman who was a spiritualistic medium. 
He was a stranger in the city without a friend and had only 
two dollars in his pocket. He constituted a good subject 
with which to establish a reputation for energy and activity 
in the performance of public duty and he was hurried to the 
gallows. Being without counsel and penniless, the court 
appointed Damon Y. Kilgore, the only man at the bar who 
beheved in spirituaUsm, to defend him. Kilgore had just 
been admitted to the bar, knew nothing about handling a cause, 
and, besides, although Winnemore had been an epileptic 
from childhood, he had neither time nor means for getting 
evidence together. The trial came off the following week, 
ending in prompt conviction and the public comment of 
"well done." Mann had the reputation of being generous 
among his friends and good to the poor. Brooke, better 
known as "Charlie," came to the bar from the office of a 
banker. He wore a huge black mustache and drank to 
excess, but could make a speech and had capacity. He 
later went to New York, where he established a great repu- 
tation as a criminal lawyer and finally died leaving three 
families and a fortune of a thousand dollars. 

Theodore Cuyler, the counsel of the Pennsylvania Rail- 
road, a suave and subtle man, is perhaps best described by 
the epigram of Samuel Dickson, who said of him that "He 
had every quality of an advocate. He could persuade a jury 
120 



THE PHILADELPHIA BAR 

to render a verdict contrary to the facts and the Supreme 
Court to render a decision contrary to the law." 

An abler man than any of these I have mentioned was 
Furman Sheppard, robust in frame and in intellect. I have 
known many men in the various phases of Hfe — presidents, 
professors and preachers — and I am inclined to think he was 
the ablest of them all. He never achieved a work or attained 
a reputation at all commensurate with his power. The 
utilization of the forces of nature is subject to much vicissi- 
tude and the momentum of the ocean beats upon the shore 
in vain. He had some practice and when he had tried a case 
it had been exhausted. He once filled the office of district 
attorney for the county and he had neither predecessor nor 
successor. He had read widely, not only in the philosophy 
of the law, but in literature and theology, and he compre- 
hended their full significance. Perhaps he was a little inert. 
Perhaps he did not fully realize his own capacity. After 
accepting an invitation to make a speech at the dinner 
given to Benjamin H. Brewster when appointed Attorney 
General of the United States, he failed to appear . Perhaps 
conscious of strength, he disdained to seek for opportunity 
and reputation and waited for the world to see for itself. 
He was a Democrat in a Republican city, but so was Patti- 
son. Whatever be the cause, certain it is that many lesser 
men have gone much further. 

I saw Anton Probst, a httle, light-colored, dull-looking 
German, as they brought him in the van to the court house 
at Sixth and Chestnut streets to be tried. Employed by a 
farmer named Deering, down near the junction of the two 
rivers in the region called "The Neck," he killed the father, 
mother and a family of children, one a mere infant, in order 
to secure a small sum of money. Driven through the crowd, 
who jeered and threatened, he seemed like some hunted 
animal. He still retains the distinction of being the most 
atrocious mxu-derer in our annals. 

I attended the trial of George S. Twitchell. An old 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

lady, the mother of Twitchell's wife, hved in the house with 
them. She lay on the sofa in the sitting room with a roll 
of money in her bosom and while there some one beat her 
to death by repeated blows over the head. The blood flew 
in curved streams over the paper of the wall. The next 
morning her body was found in the yard, where it had been 
thrown from a window ; alongside of it lay the long bloody 
poker with which the detectives concluded she had been 
stricken. Twitchell was accused of the crime. Henry S. 
Hagert and Furman Sheppard represented the common- 
wealth, and William B. Mann and John O'Byrne, an eloquent 
Irishman, who had been a hatter, who went to Delaware 
afterward in an effort to reach the senate, and who, failing, 
closed his career in New York, represented the defendant. 
The commonwealth contended that Twitchell, in financial 
straits, quarreled with his mother-in-law over money. The 
defense contended that a robber found his way into the 
house from the street, and they had some evidence to support 
the theory. Mann spent the most of his time in an effort 
to convince the jury that the poker could not have produced 
those curves of blood drops on the wall, and he illustrated 
his argument with all sorts of weapons. Some long and 
stiff like a poker and some made of leather and twine, to be 
limber and swinging. As I listened I did a piece of analytical 
work and reached the conclusion that Twitchell had killed 
the woman and that he had not done it with the poker. 
Mann would not have spent so much effort upon what, 
after all, was a mere detail, unless he had been sure beyond 
doubt that in this respect the case of the commonwealth 
was at fault and he could only be so sure because of informa- 
tion from his client. Twitchell was convicted, and years 
afterward it was told that Mann and O'Byrne had gone to 
the house and secured from its hiding place the "billy" with 
which he did the deed. Mrs. Twitchell mortgaged the 
house to counsel to pay their fees. A friend of Twitchell 
stood by him faithfully at the dock through the whole trial, 
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THE PHILADELPHIA BAR 

and when the sheriff went to hang him he was found dead in 
his cell from poison which no one knew how he had secured. 
During the first year of my practice I received in fees 
S800, and the annual returns slowly increased. When 
I married Virginia Earl Broomall, October 20, 1870, I 
was making from $1,800 to S2,000 a year. At that time 
I had moved my office to 209 South Sixth Street, where 
I had a room to myself. When I went out I tacked a card 
on the door. For years I carried my lunch down to the 
office in my green bag and I walked from my home at 2002 
North Marvine Street and later 1540 North Fifteenth Street. 
I settled up the affairs of my uncle, Dr. Samuel A. Whitaker, 
who owned one-twenty-first part of the Phoenix Iron Com- 
pany, and became his administrator. I was the administra- 
tor of the estate of my aunt, Sarah Ann Whitaker, who 
left about $70,000, and my grandfather, leaving an estate 
of $520,000, made me one of his executors. Among my 
clients were Focht, Whitaker & Co. and William H. Whitaker 
& Co., coal merchants; Jacob S. Neafie, the ship builder; 
George H. Sellers, a brother of William Sellers; Wharton 
Barker, the banker, and William L. Wilson, in his day the 
leading tile merchant of the city. Wilson employed me by 
the year and paid me an annual salary of $100. For him 
I fought almost everybody of any consequence in the city, 
including the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, Adams 
Express Company and the Drexels. He combined most 
methodical ways with abnormal combativeness. He took 
exception once to my payment of twenty-five cents for a 
subpcena without direct authority, and the matter had to 
be left to arbitration. He kept a book in which he recorded 
the details of conversations in preparation for lawsuits. 
Once in a trial he sent me this book and, much to my sur- 
prise, I found renderings of what I had said to him, with 
the dates. The information made me thenceforth careful. 
A. Sydney Biddle brought a bill in equity against him in 
behalf of Colonel William S. Moorehead and the testimony 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

was taken before Richard S. Hunter, as master, and as was 
then the custom, was written out without a stenographer. 
The case progressed until I put Wilson on the stand and 
Biddle undertook to cross-examine him. Biddle, a fluent 
and verbose man, asked a question a page or two long. 
Wilson had a clothes-basket full of papers, every one of 
which was of the utmost importance, and taking them and 
his book gave an answer covering twenty pages. Biddle's 
long efforts to shorten the response simply called forth 
further explanations. So it continued until the case fell of 
its own weight. It never reached a decision and never will. 
Almost needless to add, Wilson finally encoimtered financial 
disaster. The last time I heard of him I sent him ten 
dollars to relieve the immediate want of bread. Perfectly 
upright and ever meaning well, he was too much given to 
exactness and detail. 

Wharton Barker thought himself worth a million dollars, 
probably with truth. He did much for me in many ways. 
I bought the charter and organized for him the Finance 
Company of Pennsylvania, now one of the most important 
of our financial institutions. Through him I once repre- 
sented Baring Bros, of London and recovered from the 
Pennsylvania Railroad Company the value of a lot of stolen 
bonds. Through him I became one of the pioneers in the 
construction of trusts. Barker, always alert and energetic, 
but a little lacking in the steadiness which comes from cool 
judgment, was one of the first men in the world to see the 
possibilities of the development of relations with China, a 
goal toward which we are now moving, and he secured a 
sort of concession for the construction of railroads through- 
out that empire. In its terms it was so general and vague 
that I gave him an opinion that it had little or no practical 
value, and urged him to endeavor to get the Orientals to be 
more precise. Ma Eje Chang, who was some near relative of 
Li Hung Chang, came with a retinue to Philadelphia. Psy- 
chologically, the interviews were of intense interest. Barker, 
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THE PHILADELPHIA BAR 

quick to speak and move and full of nervous energy, beat 
and beat in vain against the Chinese who sat there, smooth 
and polished, but stolid and imperturbable. They probably 
knew at the outset just what they wanted to do and what 
they were unwilling to do, but it required days of prolonged 
and chafing delay to get from them a real expression of 
thought, and in the end the expression was of doubtful 
meaning. However, Barker and the financiers with him — 
Hamilton Disston, Samuel R. Shipley, president of the 
Provident Life and Trust Company, a keen personage, and 
others — concluded they had sufficient and upon the basis 
of this concession I organized a trust with a capital of 
twenty millions of dollars. 

A lawyer sees much of the tragedy of existence. A few 
years after my admission to the bar, I was retained by a man 
belonging to one of the most respectable of the country 
families of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His son, a boy about 
eighteen years of age, had found employment as a clerk in 
one of the large insurance companies of the city. One day 
the directors held a meeting at the office of the company. 
In the course of the meeting the president went to the outer 
office and gave to this boy the bank book with about fifteen 
hundred dollars in notes, to take to the bank to deposit. 
The meeting was prolonged and when it adjourned late in 
the afternoon the president inquired for the boy and learned 
that he had not returned. Inquiry and search failed to 
disclose what had become of him, but it was ascertained that 
he had not reached the bank. The officers of the company 
held the theory that he had stolen the money, and they 
employed detectives and confidently declared that he would 
be captured within a few days. At this juncture his rela- 
tives, in much distress, came to me. Their view was he 
had been overcome by footpads, who knew he had a large 
sum of money, and they blamed the officers for sending him 
out with it. However, the father, who could not secure so 
much cash, offered to give a mortgage upon his farm for 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

the amount in settlement, and I made this proposition to 
counsel of the company. Information from their detectives 
made them sure of having both the boy and the money in a 
few days, and they declined the proposition. Days and 
weeks rolled by and then they wanted to have it renewed, 
but in the meantime the anxiety of my clients had to some 
extent been relieved; they had grown more accustomed to 
the situation, and they refused. For twenty years the 
events remained a mystery, and then were disclosed. The 
boy wrote home. He had never before in his life seen so 
much money; the opportunity to grasp a fortune lay in his 
hand, he yielded to the temptation and stole the money. 
Instinctively he turned toward home. He went to the 
depot of the North Pennsylvania Railroad Company and 
bought a ticket for his native village. Then it suddenly 
occurred to him that he could not be safe there and he 
turned on his steps, went to the Pennsylvania Railroad depot 
and started for the far West. No cunningly devised plan 
would have resulted in such success as this impulsive action. 
The detectives traced him to the North Penn depot and 
there learned the station for which he had bought a ticket. 
Then in their wisdom they knew that his relatives were 
hiding him in Bucks County. They watched accordingly, 
watched in vain, and so prevented the company from getting 
the mortgage. Inside of three months he had lost every 
cent of the money. Then he went to work in a powder mill 
where the danger was great and the wages high, and he 
saved. Then he learned bookbinding, prospered and 
became the head of an estabhshment. He had changed his 
name, married, had a family of children and grown rich, and 
at last he wrote home to pay off the old score with interest. 
E. Greenough Piatt, a very capable lawyer in the office 
of John C. Bullitt, and my friend Hollingsworth, had under- 
taken to prepare a third volume of the index to the EngUsh 
Common Law Reports, which had been commenced years 
before by George W. Biddle and Richard C. McMurtrie. 
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THE PHILADELPHIA BAR 

The task involved much labor, little had been accomplished, 
and they prevailed upon me, with the consent of the pub- 
hshers, to come to their assistance. Thereafter the entire 
responsibility rested on me. Hollingsworth had completed 
three volumes of the reports, Piatt ten, and I digested the 
remaining twenty-two volumes, arranged the book, saw it 
through the press and was permitted to write the preface. 
Published in 1879, it constituted my first contribution to the 
literature of the profession. About the time I entered upon 
this work, I became associated with the Weekly Notes of 
Cases, a lawyers' reporting journal, and aided in the prepara- 
tion of each one of the forty-five volumes until it closed, 
having charge of the reports for one of the common pleas 
courts. There could have been no better training for the 
bench. For a time the pubhcation was remunerative. It 
belonged to an association consisting of Albert A. Outer- 
bridge, Judge James T. Mitchell, W. Wynne Wister, Henry 
Budd, Lawrence Lewis, Jr., and myself. Among the many 
reporters whom I had on my staff in the course of years, two 
showed unusual capacity — George Harrison Fisher, whom I 
later met on the council of the Historical Society of Pennsyl- 
vania, and Abraham M. Beitler, whom I later met on the 
bench. Fisher had social standing and the serious achieve- 
ment of his life has been to maintain it unimpaired. Beitler, 
the son of a hotel keeper on Market Street, and the nephew 
of an old political war horse, Alderman David Beitler, 
became director of a department under Mayor Stuart, an 
acceptable judge in the Court of Common Pleas No. 1, and 
is now a partner of Samuel Dickson and has a lucrative 
corporation practice. 

I likewise prepared four volumes of Penny packer's 
Supreme Court Reports, for which I received, from Pees 
Welsh & Co., eight hundred dollars a volume, and in which 
I was much assisted by Albert B. Weimer, a graduate of 
Harvard University and a polished young fellow who has 
since made his mark in the city. After going upon the 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

bench I delivered, in 1892, the annual address before the 
Law Academy upon the subject of ''Pennsylvania Colonial 
Cases," which I subsequently enlarged into a volume. 
Horace Binney, in his Leaders of the Old Bar, had ventured 
the assertion that prior to the time of William Lewis and the 
Revolution we could never learn anything of the manner of 
conducting the courts, and Peter McCall, in an address 
many years before, had regretted that the names of the 
only four lawyers in the province, whom Sprogell monopo- 
lized in his contest with Pastorius, had been lost. With 
much satisfaction, I gave reports of about sixty cases, 
between 1683 and 1703, and added the names of those four 
lawyers. 

During my practice I had four students — Chester N. 
Farr, who became private secretary to Governors Hart- 
ranft and Hoyt; Stanley Williamson, who died young; 
William Righter Fisher, who had been a professor in Dick- 
inson College and has since been a professor of law in Temple 
College; and Joseph Whitaker Thompson, now the United 
States District Attorney for the Eastern District of 
Pennsylvania. 

When I came to the bar, Daniel Dougherty had the 
reputation of being its orator, but he was only an orator. 
He had a national reputation. Like so many other American 
orators, he was an Irishman. I have heard him Ukened to 
necessity because of the maxim that ''necessity knows no 
law, " but that was an exaggeration of the truth and prob- 
ably arose from the envy of some commentator less gifted. 
The first time he made a political speech he fainted and had 
to be carried from the platform. I once heard him make a 
powerful appeal to the jury, in an important case in which 
he was opposed by William W. Ker, who had only force 
and experience. When Ker arose he said quietly: "Gentle- 
men, you are to be congratulated. Those who generally 
hear Mr. Dougherty, listen for an hour at the Academy of 
Music and pay a dollar for the privilege. You have heard 
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THE PHILADELPHIA BAR 

him for four hours for nothing." Ker won the case. 
Dougherty had a fine presence, side whiskers and a persuasive 
voice. 

The most eccentric character at the bar was Lucas 
Hirst. He had offices on Walnut Street above Sixth, and 
ate his meals and kept a woman at the same place. Thin, 
with sandy complexion and red hair, he had a high, rasping 
voice. Other lawyers kept away from him as much as 
possible. Not only had he ability and readiness for the 
encounter, but papers had a habit of disappearing and some- 
times they did not remain at the end of the suit as they had 
been at the beginning. On one occasion he went to the 
library of the Law Association to examine a report. The 
attendants were distrustful and hesitated to let him have 
it. ''I will fix you," he threatened, in his shrillest tones. 
When he died he bequeathed a considerable estate for the 
purpose of founding a free law library and no doubt, as 
years go by and his form and idiosyncracies are forgotten, 
his reputation will be assured as a philanthropist and public 
benefactor. In fact, we find as we examine the mysteries of 
life that even the worst of men do more good in the world 
than they do harm. The money which the gambler has 
cheated to secure and hoarded to preserve goes finally to 
the building of a chapel. Even if impelled by an unworthy 
motive, Hirst will have done more in the end to give practical 
assistance to the lawyers of the future than the most credited, 
capable and upright of his contemporaries. Moreover, 
the impulses of the human heart are both complicated and 
inscrutable, and in all probability Hirst had long been 
pondering over some method by which he could aid his 
fellows and gain their good will. 

During the course of my practice three men whom I 
pursued for debt committed suicide — one shot himself, one 
leaped into the Delaware from a steamboat, and the third 
was found hanging in a barn. 

I dechned to take cases in the criminal court. My chief 
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

reason was that I feared that through lack of skill and 
experience upon my part some innocent person might be 
convicted and punished. In pursuing this course I made a 
mistake, since, except in cases of popular clamor to which 
timid juries and judges yield, the chances of the conviction 
of innocence are very slight. 

At a dinner, October 1, 1888, Justice Miller, of the 
Supreme Court of the United States, gave such an interesting 
narrative of a crisis in American history that I wrote it out 
in full at the time, as follows: 

October 1, 1888. 

To-day Justice Samuel F. Miller of the Supreme Court of 
the United States delivered the opening address to the law class 
of the University of Pennsylvania, and at seven o'clock he sat 
down to a dinner at the Rittenhouse Club, No. 1811 Walnut 
Street, tendered to him by the faculty of the law department 
of the University. There were at the dinner C. Stuart Patterson, 
George Harding, Wayne MacVeagh, Dr. William Pepper, Judge 
T. K. Finletter, Samuel W. Pennypacker, Dr. Jayne, Judge 
Henry Reed, A. Sydney Biddle, Judge William Butler, Morton P. 
Henry, Judge James T. Mitchell, George Tucker Bispham, 
Justice Miller, Richard C. McMurtrie, Judge William McKenna. 

After the wine had to some extent enlivened the party the 
turn taken by the conversation made it a most interesting event. 
The Justice said that during the war the most strenuous efforts 
were made to use the court in such a way as to embarrass the 
Government in its conduct of operations by endeavoring to get 
decisions upon such questions as the right of Mr. Seward to con- 
fine obnoxious persons in the forts, the right of Mr. Stanton to 
confiscate the property of citizens in the rebellious states, etc. 
One lawyer from Mississippi spent about two years in endeavor- 
ing, in various ways, to get a decision upon some case of this 
kind. Once upon an application to advance a habeas corpus 
case the court seemed inclined to take the action. The Justice 
took occasion to see a friend of Justice Nelson and tell him that it 
would depend upon how Nelson voted as to whether the case 
should be advanced upon the list, and since it was a matter simply 
of the methods and administration of the business of the court, it 
did not seem improper to talk to him about its effect on public 
affairs. Nelson afterward voted against the advancement. The 
Justice did more to prevent interference by the court than per- 
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THE PHILADELPHIA BAR 

haps any other member of it. This brought up the subject of 
Jeremiah S. Black. The Justice said: "Black, as a man, was 
simply abominable, but there was no one who appeared before 
the court to whom it was so agreeable to listen. In hearing him 
you felt that you did not care a damn whether he was talking about 
his case or about any other case, but there was a wealth of illus- 
tration, a knowledge of the Bible and of Shakespeare wrought into 
his arguments which made you feel that you would like him to go 
on forever. On one occasion he had a case arising under the 
Civil Rights Bill from South Carolina, in which, characterizing 
the position of the other side, he said that there was no decision 
in any court in Christendom which would justify it. He then 
reached into his pocket for his silver tobacco box which was 
always there, took it slowly out, put into his cavernous jaws a 
mass of the tobacco and, as if it had just occurred to him, continued : 
' Yes. there is one case which may apply. It is that of Dido vs. 
Carthage. There you remember the land was bought by hides and 
the amount was determined by so many hides covering the 
ground. It occurred to one casuist there that the hides might be 
cut into strips and more land be got under them in that way. 
Now that case may be an authority for the other side.' 

"He never was a sound lawyer. When he first came down to 
Washington, he had only been in the habit of getting ten and 
fifteen dollar fees, but he soon found that he could get almost 
any sum and he afterward charged enormous fees. 

"Toward the latter part of the time he used to argue for the 
listeners and pay less attention to the law and would maneuver 
so as to postpone his cases until there were hearers. We humored 
him, more or less, in the matter. After the report of the Electoral 
Commission he, for the purpose of abusing us, appeared before the 
Commission. He said the most dreadful things. If it had been a 
court he would have been locked up for contempt. I would have 
locked him up for contempt within ten minutes after he began. 
Judge Strong, who had been a great friend of his, refused, after- 
ward, for more than a year, to recognize him. At length, when 
Strong was going to Europe, Black wrote to me saying that what 
he had said was in a public capacity, that I had not taken personal 
offense at it, and asking me whether I would not see Strong and 
endeavor to present it to him in this light. I did so and they 
became reconciled. The more outrageous things Black said never 
were printed." 

This brought up MacVeagh who said with an assurance which 
is natural to him: "Strong felt it because he could not rid himself 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

of the idea that he was sitting as a judge of a court which was a 
great mistake. You took the sensible view of it. You always 
recognized that you were not there as a judge at all." "I was 
there," replied the Justice, "as if I were a judge to decide the 
matter as nearly according to the law as it could be done and to 
do justice." "There is no use in disguising the fact," said 
MacVeagh, "that the Commission was in no sense a court. The 
Commission decided in favor of Hayes and when I went down to 
New Orleans at the head of the MacVeagh Commission I over- 
ruled them." "What is your view of the law of the matter, 
MacVeagh?" inquired the Justice. "When I went down there," 
said MacVeagh, "I found that everything in fact was under the 
control of the Nichols Government. When a child was born he 
was registered by an officer under Nichols. When he died, probate 
was granted by an official appointed by the Nichols Government. 
Marriage certificates were taken out in its name. I estabHshed 
it de jure as well as de facto. With a grim and resolute President 
like Grant, with a Secretary of War like my brother-in-law, not 
over scrupulous, with an army officer like Sheridan, with a return- 
ing board not over scrupulous, if the Republicans could not get a 
majority of more than eight thousand, there was not much in 
their position." 

The Justice said: 

"The Constitution of Louisiana provided years before that 
there should be a returning board empowered to count the votes 
and determine the result. It seems to have been foreseen that 
there might come a time when force might be used in an election 
and this was the means provided for meeting it. We considered 
that this was a subject witliin the control of the state. To permit 
Congress to determine the vote would have resulted in the destruc- 
tion of the Government. That body never acts judicially. It 
would be like their determination upon the rights to seats which 
are invariably decided in favor of those in sympathy with the 
majority. So it would be in the case of a President. There was 
no doubt fraud in Louisiana as there was also the use of force. 
But our view was that the state must regulate the casting and the 
counting of the vote. It had developed this plan and had the 
power to do it. We saved the country at that time from anarchy 
and there has been little recognition of our service. The 
Democrats abused us and the RepubHcans have never come to 
our defense. 

"Many Democrats have thanked me since for preserving this 
right to the states. There is more appreciation of it among the 
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THE PHILADELPHIA BAR 

Democrats than among the Republicans. But unquestionably 
it was a grave crisis happily surmounted." 

MacVeagh's attack did not meet the approval of those present; 
and Judge Mitchell said, hardly in undertones: "I have a good 
deal of patience, but it provokes me; it is as much as I can stand, 
to sit here and listen to MacVeagh talldng his Independent 
Republican politics." 

The Constitution of the United States having been 
adopted in a convention held in Philadelphia in 1787, and 
frona the national point of view this being the most important 
event in our history, it was determined to celebrate the cen- 
tennial anniversary in a fitting manner in 1887. J. Granville 
Leach offered a resolution in the Law Academy that the 
Chief Justice and the Associate Justices of the Supreme 
Court of the United States be entertained by the bar of the 
city. The project took shape. McMurtrie was made 
chairman, Joseph B. Town send, treasurer, and Penny- 
packer, secretary, of a conamittee to carry out the plan, 
but Leach and I did all the work. We gathered in the 
subscriptions by personal solicitation at ten dollars each, and 
made the arrangements. We gave the Justices a breakfast 
in the foyer of the Academy of Music on the fifteenth of 
September at which the Chief Justice, Morrison R. Waite, 
Richard C. McMurtrie, Judge J. I. Clark Hare, President 
Judge of the Court of Common Pleas No. 2; Justice Edward 
M. Paxson of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the 
Honorable W. S. Kirkpatrick, Attorney General of Penn- 
sylvania, and John Sergeant Wise of Virginia made speeches. 
Society ladies sat in the adjoining room and ate, drank, 
chatted and listened. 

In connection with the same celebration the learned 
societies of Philadelphia, including the University of Penn- 
sylvania, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the 
American Philosophical Society, gave a dinner in the 
Academy of Music on the seventeenth of September, which 
was perhaps the most imposing function that ever occurred 

133 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

in the United States. The subscription price was twenty- 
five dollars a plate. The ra^nus were entirely etched and 
cost three dollars each. Dr. William Pepper, Provost of 
the University of Pennsylvania, appeared the most con- 
spicuously and Frederick D. Stone furnished the motive 
power. I was chairman of the executive committee. The 
President of the United States, Grover Cleveland; the 
Vice-President; the Chief Justice; the Secretaries of War 
and of the Navy; the General of the Army, Philip H. 
Sheridan; the English Ambassador, Sir Lyon Playfair; the 
French Ambassador, the Marquis de Chambrun; the 
governors of many of the states, with senators, congress- 
men, men of science and of letters, thoroughly representing 
the activities of the whole country, took part in the dinner. 
Mrs. Cleveland, who had been recently married and who 
was in the pride of her youthful beauty and popularity, held 
a reception in the corridors where ladies and gentlemen 
listened to the proceedings, watched the movements and 
decorations and wished for the terrapin. I wrote little 
books describing these banquets and both of them were 
subsequently printed. My connection with these affairs 
and the correspondence necessarily conducted brought me 
temporarily into almost intimate association with the 
Chief Justice and other members of the Supreme Court. 
Waite was a dark-eyed, good-looking man, well groomed, 
with much courtesy of manner, but he made no other 
impression on me. 

As it happened, a few months later, for the first time in 
my life I had three cases in the Supreme Court of the United 
States and I went down to Washington, having arranged 
with a friend at our bar to move for my admission. He 
failed to appear. Seeing General Benjamin F. Butler, of 
Massachusetts, looking old, stout, weather-beaten, but 
sturdy, with his twisted eye fastened on a brief, I went over 
to him and said : 

"General, you do not know me, but you did know my 
134 



THE PHILADELPHIA BAR 

cousin, General Pennypacker, who fought in your command 
on the James. I have been disappointed in not finding a 
Philadelphia lawyer here, whom I had expected to see, and 
I should be much pleased as well as honored if you would 
move for my admission." 

He turned that eye on me a little athwart and said a 
little gruffly : ''But the rule requires a personal acquaintance. 
Do you know no one here?" 

"Oh, yes, I know all of the Court." 

Just then the justices filed in and each of them in turn 
nodded to me with a smile, a recognition unusual in court 
and accorded to no other man there. 

''I shall be glad to make the motion," said the General; 
and at Pennj^acker's Mills, along with the papers and letters 
that relate to the two banquets, is the parchment scroll that 
certifies my admission to practice in the Supreme Court — 
on the motion of Benjamin F. Butler, Esq. 



135 



M 



CHAPTER VI 

Litterateur and Book-Hunter 

Y great-grandfather, Matthias Pennypacker, had 
a reputation for vigorous and apt expression. 
Since his day the faculty has manifested itself 
in a number of his descendants. Judge Henry 
C. Conrad, of Wilmington, Delaware; Charles H. Penny- 
packer, the burgess of West Chester; Elijah F. Pennypacker, 
Canal Commissioner of Pennsylvania, with Thaddeus 
Stevens; Dr. Nathan A. Pennypacker, member of assembly 
in 1866, and my father, have shown the gift of speech in 
more than the ordinary measure. My brother, Isaac R. 
Pennj^acker, who wrote the accepted life of General George 
G. Meade, has written poems which caught the attention 
of Longfellow and were included in his Poems of Places 
and other verse which Edmund Clarence Stedman said 
was superior in merit to his own efforts. 

I began to write in my childhood and to make speeches 
in my early youth. At twenty-four I wrote an epic poem 
upon the war, giving in sombre and gloomy tones the 
incidents of the sad careers of Josiah White and his sweet- 
heart, with the scene laid at Phoenixville along the French 
Creek and the Schuylkill River. I give below a piece of 
early occasional verse, a tribute to my mother and a sonnet 
to Lloyd Mifflin, written within the last few years. Some 
of my translations of German hymns may be found in 
Brumbaugh's Christopher Dock, in my Pennsylvania in 
American History, and a translation from the German verse 
of Pastorius was set to music by the Orpheus Club of 
Philadelphia and sung two winters at the Academy of 
Music. 
136 



LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

To the verse above mentioned I select another to be 
included in this narrative. The Haslibacher hymn written 
in the sixteenth century and pubhshed in the Aushund, 
a hymn book of the Mennonites which has gone through 
eight editions in America and is still used among the Amish 
of Lancaster County, always made a strong impression 
upon me because of its dramatic power and simplicity. 
It has many of the features of the ballad literature and 
of the Nibelungenlied. I translated it from the German 
when at Harrisburg, in the midst of my first session of the 
legislature, as a sort of relief from the onerous pressure 
of new and difficult official duties. The translation pre- 
serves the rhyme, meter and versification, and to a certain 
extent maintains the spirit of the original : 



(Sola) 



Xanthippe* 

The tea of yarbs that cured my mother must 
Have lost its virtue, opodeldoc don't 
Appear to do no good, and what betwixt 
The rheumatiz and Socrates I feel 
A-worried nigh to death. He is the most 
Provoking man alive I do believe. 
While I am down upon my knees, and me 
All stiff and crippled, scrubbing off the floor 
And trying hard to keep things neat and clean 
He's gone with Alcibiades and them 
Old loafers wandering around the streets 
To talk about Philosophy. There's lots 
Of work to do in Athens he might get. 
If he would only try, and give up these 
Ridiculous notions. Then we might live just 
As nice as other folks. There has not been 
A carpet on this floor for seven years, 
And when I tell him, as I sometimes do, 
He says, "The Gods require no carpet and 
Xanthippe we but imitate the Gods." 
As if that consolation were to me! 



* Written by request in early life for a public entertainment given at Phcenizville at which 
were represented a number of historic women. 



137 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

What use it is to dream about old books 

And such Uke rubbish when the flour's all gone 

And me and his poor children have not got 

A decent thing to wear, I do not see. 

Now there's Epaminondas' pants. If I 

Have patched them once, I've patched them forty times 

Until the stuff's so thin the thread won't hold 

And yet he goes a-sneaking through the house 

His eyes half shut, his thoughts intent upon 

Elysium or some other place, and can 

Not see the boy's ashamed to turn his back 

Toward any one. No wonder that I scold 

But 'tain't a bit of use. He pays no more 

Attention than a post. I might as well 

Be pouring water in the Hellespont. 

He all the while that soft and sheepish smile 

Will wear upon his face and count the flies 

Along the wall until I stop to get 

My breath, and then he walks away without 

A word. I get so mad, it makes me feel 

As if I were Erymneus. ' Tother day 

When I for fully half an hour had been 

A-telling him about the ham we want, 

He stared and slowly said, "Yes, Critias, 

The cycle system must be right." I up 

And snatched the basin of hot water that 

I had to wash the dishes with and poured 

The slops upon his old bald head. He wiped 

His face and muttered, "When the thunders cease, 

Then comes the rain," He'll be the death of me, 

I know. 

My Mother 

The Spartan mothers in the days of old, 

So runs the story, were entire content 

To see their sons who forth to battle went 

Return with maims and wounds, were they but bold ; 

Or slain, if that no mark of shame they bore 

To show they faltered when they met the foe; 

Such gifts these Grecian mothers could bestow — 

Such sacrifices as a crown they wore. 

My mother wears a crown of greener bay, 

And offers better gifts by far than they, 



138 



LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

For that herself is her whole sacrifice. 

In all her life of one and seventy years 

No act of hers has caused another fears, 

No word of hers has dimmed another's eyes. 

From oft the crest I peer a-down the vale 

Toward which her feebler footsteps now descend, 

Toward which my own path must henceforward trend, 

And try through shadows to forecast the tale; 

Or looking backward to that further time 

When I was but a child, and she in prime, 

Recall her tender touch and soft caress 

And all her gentle ways and kindliness. 

In that long journey (may it lengthen yet) 

She e'er has kept within the narrow way. 

No thought of self has tempted her to stray; 

There's nothing she would have her sons forget. 

Oh, mother! if I too should reach thy age 

Like unto thine may my then written page 

Be clean and pure — may virtue be instilled, 

And every duty be as thine fulfilled. 

March 23, 1886. 

Lloyd Mifflin 

The sceptre once with dread to man was fraught. 
That day has gone — the kings have lost their sway — 
The priest no longer rules but kneels to pray, 
And o'er the earth the mightiest power is thought. 
A sylvan poet bends to touch his lyre 
Where Susquehanna waters woo the isles. 
And fields of dawn grow green with nature's smiles. 
He sweeps the strings that glow with more than fire. 
In busy marts the trader stays his gain; 
The shepherd drops his crook in Arno's vales; 
Miletus waits to hear forgotten tales; 
While listening sorrow hides her inmost pain. 
The harp long mute by Scio's haunted leas 
Is swept again by classic melodies. 

Hymn 

A beautiful spiritual hymn concerning Haslibacher, how he 
was led from life to death. 

In tone "Warum betriibst du dich mein Hertz." 

139 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

From the archaic German in the Aushund, a Mennonite Hymn 
Book published in Switzerland about 1620 and in Pennsylvania 
reproduced eight times. 

Translated into English verse by Samuel W. Pennypacker, 
March 8th, 1904. 

1. We sing in such way as we can 

The fate which happened an old man. 

He came from HasHbach. 
HasHbacher was he called, 
Out of Kilchori Summiswald. 

2. The dear Lord suffered it to be 
That he was punished grievously 

Because of his belief. 
They caught him at his home, I learn, 
And took him to the town of Berne. 

3. And there in prison he was cast. 
In pain and torture was held fast, 

Because of his belief. 
But pain and torture did not scathe 
And steadfast kept he to his faith. 

4. On Friday, as I understand, 

The learned priests who ruled the land 

Went to his prison cell, 
Began to argue that he ought 
To yield the faith he had been taught. 

5. The Haslibacher listened long 
While they disputed hard and strong, 

Then made this quick response : 
"I will not my behef resign, 
While life is in this body mine." 

6. Upon a Saturday again 
Appeared anew these learned men 

And angrily they spoke: 
" If now this faith you do not doff 
You soon will have your head cut off." 

140 



LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

7. The answer came both short and quick: 
"To my behef I mean to stick, 

I hold it steadfastly, 
If God approves, naught can alarm 
And he will save me from all harm." 

8. And that same Saturday at night 
An Angel of the Lord with might 

To Haslibacher came, 
And said: "The Lord me here did send 
To strengthen you to meet your end." 

9. "To give you help that will avail 
If in your faith you do not fail 

But stand both fast and firm. 
That faith is pleasing to the Lord. 
He holds your soul in good accord." 

10. "Although you will be driven hard 
And then must perish by the sword, 

Be not thereat alarmed. 
There I shall be right at your side 
And all the pain you may abide." 

IL While Monday's hours were passing o'er 
The learned men came still once more 

To Haslibacher's cell, 
And what they wanted was in brief 
He should surrender his belief. 

12. "If not," said they with the same breath, 
"Tomorrow you will suffer death." 

Then HasHbacher said : 
"Before my own behef I scoff 
You may indeed cut my head off." 

13. That Monday night in darkness deep 
The Haslibacher lay asleep. 

About the midnight hour 
He dreamed it was all light, and they 
Had come to take his head away. 

141 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

14. The Haslibacher then arose, 

A brilHant light did all disclose, 

A book before him lay — 
An Angel of the Lord then spoke : 
"Read what you find in this dread book." 

15. He found as then he turned to look 
This marvel writ within the book, 

''When they cut off your head 
Three signs will God disclose to view, 
To show the wrong done unto you." 

16. And after he had read it all. 
Again the night did 'round him fall, 

Again he fell asleep, 
And never did he wake once more 
Until they oped his prison door. 

17. They bade to him a pleasant morn. 

He thanked them with no touch of scorn. 

And then to him they said : 
"You first the Godly word shall hear 
Then eat a meal, the last while here." 

18. "From my belief I do not part. 
The Godly w^ord is in my heart, 

My cause I give to God, 
My soul is darkened by no lie 
And innocent I wish to die." 

19. Then to an Inn they took their way, 
Good meat and drink before him lay. 

The headsman by his side. 
That he should be in sorest dread 
And from his faith be thus misled. 

20. The Mennist to the headsman spoke: 
"Your meat and drink my courage woke, 

You will upon this day 
Pour out an innocent man's blood, 
But that is for my soul's great good." 



142 



LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

21. He further said: "God will you show 
Three signs that you may easily know 

And every man can see; 
My head cut off will lie awhile 
Then leap into my hat and smile." 

22. "The second sign will be as clear 
And on the sun itself appear. 

Now to the third give heed; 
The sun will be as red as blood, 
The Stadel Brun be a red flood." 

23. The judge turned to the lords, indeed: 
"Do you to these three signs give heed 

And see if they occur, 
If all of this should happen so 
Your souls may yet encounter woe." 

24. The meal had now an end at last. 
They wished to bind his two hands fast. 

The Haslibacher spoke : 
"I pray you Master Lorentz so 
You me permit unbound to go." 

25. "Prepared and ready 1 can be, 
My death in truth rejoices me, 

And I am full content; 
And God will mercy still bestow 
On those themselves who mercy show." 

26. As he was to the scaffold led. 

He took his hat from off his head, 

Right there before the crowd. 
"I pray you Master Lorentz that 
You let me here put down my hat." 

27. Then down he fell upon his knee 
And offered prayers up two or three, 

And longer yet he prayed. 
"What cause is mine the good God sees, 
Do with me now whate'er you please." 

143 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

28. The headsman then cut off his head, 
It leaped into his hat and bled. 

The signs could all men see. 
The sun became as red as blood, 
The Stadel Brun ran a red flood. 

29. Then said an aged man thereat: 

"The Mennist's mouth laughs in his hat." 

Then said an old gray man : 
"If you had let the Mennist live 
It would you lasting welfare give." 

30. The lords together whispered then 
"No Mennist will we judge again." 

An old man spoke aloud : 
" If as I wished it had been done, 
The Mennist had been left alone." 

31. The headsman said in saddest mood, 
"To-day have I shed guiltless blood." 

Again an old man spoke: 
"The Mennist's mouth laughed in the hat, 
God's punishment will follow that." 

32. He who this little hymn has made 
Is for his hfe in prison laid. 

To sinners sends he love; 
A man brought pen and ink to wnte 
He sends to you a last good night. 

I never had any instruction in German. After I had 
been admitted to the Bar, Dr. Oswald Seidensticker, |of 
the University of Pennsylvania, one day told me that 
George M. Wagner, a hardware merchant on Callowhill 
Street near Fifth Street, had the manuscript account book 
of Francis Daniel Pastorius, kept in 1702, and in it was 
an account with Hendrick Pannebecker. Eager to know 
what it contained, I went to examine the book, but being 
written in German script, I was unable to read it. At 
Mrs. Foster's boarding house I had an old German friend 
144 






^ p 

^^JsUluAJiji C^A^.A^A.oJVv^ {UeAdjUvvV^' U) C^ iWcUl^ fj flfi^vicUoi'. 
Page of Quotations from the Governor's Record of His Reading 



LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

named C. Louis Scherer. I led him up to the hardware 
store, but the script was two centuries old; he was matter 
of fact and absolutely devoid of imagination and he could 
not read it. I determined not to be baffled in that way, 
bought a German Grammar and Dictionary and went to 
work, and at the end of about a year I went to the store 
and made a copy of the entry. With Uke material I began 
the study of Dutch and I have carried both languages with 
me through my later life. When in Holland in 1897, I 
spent a day with a citizen of Utrecht who accompanied me 
to Gorcum. He did not know a word of English and I 
had the satisfaction of hearing a Dutchman say of myself 
on the train: ''If he were here for three months, he could 
talk Dutch." When Ashenfelter returned from an abode 
of sixteen months in Guayaquil, where he became secretary 
to the United States Consul, had the yellow fever, smuggled 
cocoa and secured, together with a profit of $1,500, a knife 
cut across the chin and a bullet wound in the leg, I began 
to study Spanish and to use it in conversation with him. 
I proceeded so far as to read Don Quixote and other Spanish 
literature, and it caused me very little difificulty. 

In 1863 I began the practice of keeping a sort of record 
of my reading, giving the name of the author, the title 
of the book, the number of pages and the excerpts of those 
thoughts which impressed me as most pleasing and forcible. 
This practice I have continued ever since and it has resulted 
in four manuscript volumes which have been of great service 
as well as satisfaction, furnishing me with ready quotations 
for papers and addresses from my own study. *0n one 



* "I have examined three note books in hia own handwriting which contain the record of 
his literary studies. They begin in October, 1863, and close, without omission of a single 
year, in 1916. They combine the features of common-place books, anthologies, quotations 
of striking passages both in prose and poetry, with careful lists of the authors read, the number 
of pages contained in each, arranged under appropriate headings. They embrace Greek, 
Latin, French, German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish as well ap English books, carefully sum- 
marized. In 1863, he read a total of 21,130 pages of which 5,336 were in law and 15,794 in 
general literature. In the former, Coke-Littleton, Blackstone, Kent, Sir William Jones, 
Burlamaqui, and Williams alternated with Voltaire, Rousseau, Des Cartes, Hobbes, Locke, 
Hume, Goethe, Spenser, Byron, Dryden, Pope, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Chaucer and Swin- 

10 145 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

occasion while I was Governor a representative of the 
North American, a worthless sheet published in Philadelphia, 
came to Pennypacker's Mills to pry into some action of 
the government supposed to be then in contemplation 
and asked me for an interview. I had learned by experi- 
ence that whether I saw him or not an interview would 
appear in the paper, since the discipline of the office required 
that something must be brought back in his bag. There- 
fore, I told him I would give him an interview. He took 
out his pencil and memorandum book and made ready, 
and I proceeded : 

''Celerity ought to be contempered with cunctation." 

''Won't you please repeat what you said?" he asked. 

"Certainly. Celerity ought to be contempered with 
cunctation." 

"Would you object to spelling that last word for me?" 

"Not at all. C-u-n-c-t-a-t-i-o-n." 

He went back to the city, hunted up his dictionary 
and wrote two or three columns, and the paper has not 
yet entirely recovered from the shock. 

While dabbling occasionally in verse and other forms 
of literary expression, especially in my young manhood, 
my chief study, apart from professional activities, has 
been in the way of historical research. My father set me 
the example by writing, in 1843, at the request of the His- 
torical Society of Pennsylvania, a local history in two 



bume. During the succeeding years he fell but little below this average. Even while he was 
Governor, oppressed with the affairs of state, he refreshed himself with literature, reading 
the Bible from cover to cover foi the fourth time; in 1904 reading 27,934 pages, of which 
1321 were in German, 48 in Dutch, and 216 in Italian. In 1906, while still in office, he ran 
the figures up to 31,578 pages, of which 779 were in German and 1002 in French. His list for 
that year includes all of Shakespeare's English histoiical plays, Henry IV, V, VI, VII, VIII , 
King John, Richard II and Richard III. In that year, as in former ones, he filled pages with 
quotations from what he had read. In 1910 while at Pennypacker's Mills, he filled 89 pages 
with extracts from Latin, French and old English authors. In 1916, while sick and suffering, 
he read Poe, Macaulay, Bayard Taylor's novels Joseph and The Slory of Kennctt, the Life of 
Menno Simons, Charles Francis Adams's Autobiography, Trollope and Koster's Secrets of 
German Success. Through all the years, at frequently recurring intervals he returned to 
Bunyan, Milton and Thomas k Kempis." — Samuel W. Pennypacker: An address delivered 
before the Philobiblon Club, October 26, 1916, by Hampton L. Carson, Esq., Philadelphia: The 
Philobiblon Club, 1917. 

146 



M^ l^C^-h^ -^v-^-^ ftfiifi^Lv 9^^ 







T^ 



<i^cK^t^^ a 3 R 

Page from the Governor's Record of His Reading Showing Total 
Number of Pages Read in the Year 1914 



LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

manuscript volumes of Schuylkill Township, Chester 
Coimty, Pa. I used this material, adding to it, and pub- 
lished, in 1872, The Annals of Phcenixville and Vicinity. 
Recently Mr. Albert Cook Myers prepared for the Pennsyl- 
vania History Club a bibliography of my printed books and 
papers. They number in all about eighty, and in the course 
of years I have come to have an extended reputation and 
a clientele for this kind of production. The Hendrick 
Pannebecker, given away in the family, on those rare occa- 
sions when it is offered for sale brings $25. The Weedon's 
Orderly Book, published at $5, sells for $10, and the Settle- 
ment of Germantown, which was put on the market at $3.50, 
has produced as high as $74 for a single copy. The pub- 
Usher buys back every copy he can get and is willing to 
pay for it $15. Taking all of these books together, how- 
ever, they have never paid me anything, but they were 
not written with the expectation of profit and I have had 
the satisfaction of elucidating by original research some 
of the interesting characters in the annals of the state. 
I have made Peter Cornelius Plockhoy and Christopher 
Dock known over the world. I have clarified and enhanced 
the reputation of both David Rittenhouse and Anthony 
Wayne. I have furnished material out of which many 
subsequent writers have constructed their books. Some 
years ago Daniel K. Cassel, a well-meaning but illiterate 
and entirely untrained old man, concluded he would like 
to write a history of the Mennonites. He came to me 
and coyly suggested that he would be helped if I should 
prepare a chapter for him. I told him that I had no time 
to devote to the task, but that if he found anything service- 
able in my published papers I should not interfere with his 
making use of them. When his book appeared I found, 
much to my surprise and amusement, that half of it was 
made up of these papers — text, notes, and citations from 
authors in other languages which he was unable to read, 
word for word, as I had written them. One day he came 

147 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

to my office and said: "The subscription price of my 
book is a dollar and a half, but I got a good deal of infor- 
mation from you, so I will sell you a copy for a dollar." 
He was entirely sincere and the joke upon me was too 
manifest not to be enjoyed. I was not willing, however, 
that the value of my work should be measm-ed at fifty 
cents and, therefore, I paid him the full price, much to his 
relief. 

In November, 1867, I heard Charles Dickens read in 
Musical Fund Hall selections from his novels, including 
the chapter upon the death of little Paul Dombey and 
extracts from the Pickwick Papers. He had his hair twisted 
into a sort of curl; he wore a velvet vest and carried an 
unnecessarily heavy gold watch chain, and on the whole 
gave the suggestion of a want of thorough breeding, perhaps 
even of commonness. He read with something of a cockney 
accent, but with considerable dramatic effect. 

Among the observances of the Centennial Celebration 
in 1876, a Congress of Authors from over the country 
assembled in Independence Hall on the Fom'th of July, 
and each author there deposited a sketch written by him- 
self of some one of the worthies of the Revolution. Mark 
Twain was one of those who participated. It was the 
only time I ever saw him, and I remember him as a slim 
man with a light complexion and a large mustache, wearing 
a white, or nearly white, suit of clothes. I wrote a paper 
upon Colonel Samuel John Atlee, who commanded the 
Pennsylvania Musketry Battalion in that war. 

On the sixth of October, 1883, the Germans of America 
celebrated the two hundredth anniversary of the coming 
of the Germans to Germantown, which was the beginning 
of that great immigration, and I made the address at the 
Academy of Music before an immense concourse of people. 
It was translated into German and republished at Hamburg. 
One day the German Consul of Philadelphia came to my 
office, bringing to me in person the official thanks of Prince 
148 



LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

Bismarck. The Germans have always shown me great 
favor, electing me one of the Archive Committee of the 
Deutsche Gesellschafft and an honorary member of the 
Canstatter Volksfest Verein and of the Maennerchor, and 
when they erected a statue of Schiller in Fairmount Park, 
I delivered the oration. 

I have certain physical peculiarities. When a rabbit 
is seen sitting upon his haunches it will be observed that 
he is continually spreading wide his nostrils. No doubt 
this power was a physical advantage to animals enabling 
them to increase their scent and thus learn of the presence 
of enemies or prey. I have the power of voluntarily using 
the muscles which dilate the nostrils. I likewise have 
control of the muscles which spread the toes of the feet, 
thus, to some extent, making them prehensile. Darwin, 
who spent much time in gathering facts from which like 
inferences may be drawn, had not discovered these and I 
wrote him a letter calling his attention to them. He replied 
in an autograph note expressing recognition of the value 
of these facts in elucidation of his theory. 

One of the descendants of Edward Lane, a beautiful 
woman, became the wife of Lieutenant A. J. Slemmer, 
who, at the outset of the War of the Rebellion, acquired 
fame through his command of Fort Pickens in Florida, 
which was one of the two forts, the other being Fort Sumter 
in South Carolina, retained by the North in the seceded 
states. Soon afterward Slemmer died and she went over 
to England and there married Professor Jebb, the cele- 
brated Greek scholar connected with Oxford University. 
Then she sent for her niece, and this niece married George, 
the son of Sir Charles Darwin. At the time of the dinner 
given by the American Philosophical Society to celebrate 
the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Franklin, 
Sir George Darwin, who was there with many other scien- 
tists, came over to me and said: ''My wife, who is here, 
tells me that you and she are cousins." She sat in the 

149 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

gallery and when I arose to speak to a toast I made a refer- 
ence to her presence. 

A third physical peculiarity is the fact that I have 
five incisor teeth in the lower jaw. One day I said to my 
colleague on the Bench, Judge Mayer Sulzberger: 
''Judge, did you know that I was a monstrosity?" 
"No. What peculiar phase of monstrosity do you 
exhibit?" 

"I have five incisor teeth in the lower jaw." 
"There is nothing strange about that; look at mine." 
And he had five incisor teeth on the lower jaw. Mon- 
strosities were a majority of the court. 

For many years I corresponded with Dr. J. G. DeHoop 
Scheffer, of Amsterdam, the historian of the Reformation 
in the Netherlands and one of the most learned scholars 
of Europe. When in Amsterdam in 1890 I called on him 
and found him a very genial old gentleman, with white 
hair, living in a house which indicated the presence of 
every necessary comfort. I presume at his suggestion I was 
elected a member of the Maatschappij Van Nederlandsche 
Letterkunde of Leyden. When our correspondence began 
I said to him that my acquaintance with Dutch was limited, 
but that if he would write in either French or German I 
could get along comfortably. He gave no attention to 
this suggestion, but wrote to me in English. 

The Comte de Paris, the Bourbon claimant of the 
throne of France and an aide-de-camp upon the staff of 
General George B. McClellan, when he was engaged in 
the preparation of his history of the War of the Rebellion, 
wrote to me a letter or two concerning the manufacture 
of the Griffen Gun at Phoenixville. That is as near as 
I have ever come to association with royalty, except that 
I once dined at the Hotel Bellevue with the present King 
of the Belgians. He had come over here to view the country, 
no doubt, as a means of enlarging his scope and preparing 
him for his prospective duties. I chatted with him for a 
150 



LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

while in French and found him polite but very much like 
other people who are met at dinners. 

When I came to the bar my dear good mother said that 
she had only two ambitions for me which she would like to 
have gratified. She would like me at some time to reach 
the bench and she would like to see me a trustee of the 
University of Pennsylvania. No doubt, in her early married 
life, my father coming recently from the medical school, 
had impressed her with the dignity and importance of 
the board of trustees who in their formal visits to the 
college seemed to him to be both grave and august. When 
John Welsh, who had been at the head of the Centennial 
Exposition, and had been Minister from the United States 
to England, died, in 1886, I was elected to take his place 
on the board of trustees. Generally these places are filled 
by selections from among people of large means and of 
social consequence, but somehow it happened. It has 
been a satisfaction to me, as I have gone through life, to 
know that all of the institutions with which I have been 
associated and many of the persons with whom I have been 
upon friendly terms have secured advantages from the 
association to a greater extent than could have been reason- 
ably anticipated. The University is no exception, and 
even in the way of financial aid, it has received more through 
my efforts than from many others of very large resources. 
One day on going down Sixth Street I met a lawyer who 
told me he had come from an argument before an auditor 
claiming a fund which had been the assets of a defunct 
hospital. I hastened to the auditor, claimed the fund 
for the University of Pennsylvania, and, although the 
testimony had been closed, succeeded in getting a hearing. 
The auditor awarded the fund to me, and on exceptions 
and argument his report was confirmed by the court of 
common pleas. Although through too much earnestness 
I gained the antipathy of Lawrence Lewis, Jr., who had 
expected to get the sum for an institution which he repre- 

151 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

sented, I carried a check for nearly six thousand dollars 
to the trustees in triumph. In numerous papers I pointed 
out the relations which had existed between the state and 
the University and did much to bring about their restoration. 
When I became Governor, by the Act of May 15, 1903, 
an appropriation of one hundred thousand dollars was 
made for the maintenance of the University, thus setting 
a precedent which has been followed since. It has gradually 
come about that in almost all of the efforts of the institu- 
tion before the legislature and the councils of the city I 
have been called upon to be a spokesman. Before I became 
a trustee the University always traced its origin to a pamph- 
let written by Franklin in 1749, but I succeeded in proving 
that it really began with a charity school for which a build- 
ing was erected in 1740, thus adding nine years to its life 
at the other end and making it antedate Princeton. Since 
my presentation of proofs to the trustees the catalogues 
have all borne the date of 1740. When I entered the 
board of trustees, at the head of the institution sat the 
Provost, Dr. William Pepper, in his time and in various 
lines of work one of the most capable men in the city. 
As a physician, he had a large and lucrative practice. Short 
in stature, with little flesh, with Hght eyes and a nose 
curving slightly, he had a bland smile and a most per- 
suasive manner. Politicians gave him the credit of rivaling 
the ablest in political skill. As a physician he entered the 
sick chamber, smiled on the woman patient, gave her 
confidence, made her better and charged her $500. Mrs. 
Haldeman, of Harrisburg, daughter of Simon Cameron, 
always kept his portrait hanging in her parlor. Inde- 
fatigable and persistent, he was ever at work and died 
young. He could go to sleep whenever he chose and sitting 
in his carriage talking would say, ''Excuse me for five 
minutes," and drop off into a nap from which, at the 
appointed moment, he aroused. The original American 
Pfeiffer came among the German peasants to Lebanon 
152 



LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

County and going from there to Philadelphia about 1790, 
built a brewery, made a fortune and founded a family. 
Nothing of his antecedents is known, but both physical 
and mental traits in his descendants suggest a Hebrew 
lineage. Dr. Pepper was the real founder of the present 
great fortunes of the University, and under his management 
it advanced with huge strides. Charles C. Harrison, short, 
stout, with dark eyes, succeeded him and has devoted the 
efforts of a lifetime to the benefit of the institution. He 
is more direct in his methods, stronger in character and 
intelligence and possesses a larger fortune which, with 
continuous generosity, he devotes to the same object. 
I know no other instance of such self-sacrifice for the sake 
of general good. Under his direction the institution has 
made still greater progress in all ways, and has taken again 
its former place in the foremost rank of American uni- 
versities. 

Among the trustees those in my time who have taken 
the most active interest in the work have been Dr. S. Weir 
Mitchell; Samuel Dickson, chancellor of the Law Associa- 
tion; Joseph S. Harris, president of the Philadelphia and 
Reading Railway; Joseph G. Rosengarten; Samuel F. 
Houston and J. Levering Jones. 

Dr. S. Weir Mitchell has won success in medicine in 
the treatment of nervous diseases and in literature in the 
production of novels. Among American historical novels 
Hugh Wynne is probably unexcelled. A tall, gaunt and 
homely man with a thin beard and mustache, he is auto- 
cratic, assertive and full of egotism, but, nevertheless, 
companionable and entertaining. He wrote to me a long 
autograph letter, which I still have, in a scrawling hand, 
about the construction of Hugh Wynne, in which he says 
the old narrow-minded Quaker father was an attempt to 
delineate the traits of a Presbyterian he had known. Once 
when he had completed an address at the Academy of 
Music he brought and gave to me the proof with his manu- 

153 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

script notes. It has been said that we look somewhat 
alike. Physically he is extremely nervous, having little 
control of his hands, so that the query arises as it did about 
the frog, why he does not cure himself, but such queries 
lead to the deeper mysteries and are unanswerable. No 
man has been more important in the literary, professional 
and social life of the city than Mitchell. The letter to 
which I have referred, giving the author's explanation 
and estimate of Hugh Wynne, his most successful book, 
follows : 

November 4, '97. 

Dear Judge. — I take my large paper because of having more to 
say than I can with comfort get into note paper. 

I wish, first, to say how much pleasure your letter gave me; 
it is despatched from a critical standpoint, so remote from that 
of the newspaper critics that, for me, it is a quite precious and 
thought-compelling document. To take it in detail, I shall Uke, 
some time, to see your treasures and talk over these for days. 
Next, yes, Mt. Hope is a pen-slip, to be amended, as in the second 
edition have been many minor errors of name, place or date. 

No, Mr. Wolfe, Mr. Webb, Mr. Howe, are in the Virginians 
and Esmond for Gen'l W., etc. It was usual unless the men 
were on duty. Even now, it is our army usage to address, in 
social life, all men under a major in rank as Mr. 

Ardmore, Bryn Mawr are recent names and as to this I 
hesitated long. To use them brought the matter in hand with- 
in the realizing capacities of the dullest, and I was trying to make 
a great story leap into life again — an intended error in name or 
time did not affect me as a novel writer. 

In Quentin Durward the wild Boar of Ardennes is killed fifteen 
years before the true time of his demise and of quite other fashion. 
As to Conshohocken and Norristown people who criticise and 
many they be that forget that H. W. presumably wrote these 
authentic memoirs circa in the 1820's when Norristown and 
Conshohocken had nominal existence. 

H. W. is an autobiography with the limitations of that rarely 
used form. With the ego one can get a sense of personal product. 
Without it we lose this charm. In Esmond, Thackeray shirked it 
and made his hero tell his tale in the third person nearly through- 
out. Hence there is in Esmond no sense of its being a man's tale 

IM 



LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

of himself. It was a mistake with the third person. Th'y ties 
himself to the limitations of the first. I mention Esmond because 
H. W. is frequently compared to it or to Th'ys solemn failure, 
The Virginians. All this is to point out to my kindly critic why 
in an autobiography I could not broadly paint those wonderful 
Quaker people. My, or the old father John W. is the only picture 
from the life in my book. It is not as a Quaker that he is drawn. 
The original was a Presbyterian. I cut out some of my Quaker 
matter as making the book too long, but in Pemberton, Howell 
and Wetherill I think I have within my space done dignified justice 
to Friends; so say at least some who have read it. One in Ger- 
mantown told Mr. S. he could not read fiction, but that perhaps 
H. W. was in a manner an allegory? 

I read last night the to-be-read parts of your book. What a 
strange and interesting story — 3,000 from the lines of two. In 
1783 came hither Jn. Cadwalader. Up to 28 years ago there had 
been 77 males of his name. 

With my salutation of repeated thanks, I am 

Yours truly, 

S. Weir Mitchell. 
Hon. Sam. W. Pennypacker. 

In March, 1872, 1 was elected a member of the Historical 
Society of Pennsylvania, which then occupied as its hall 
the building 920 Spruce Street owned by the Pennsylvania 
Hospital, which had been erected for the accommodation 
of West's painting of Christ Healing the Sick. Ere long I 
became a member of the council and vice-president, and 
in 1900 was elected to the presidency. This event marked 
an innovation in the conduct of the Society. Up to my 
time the president had always been selected from among 
families long identified with the life of the city and had 
always dwelt south of Market Street. Soon after my elec- 
tion and through my intervention the Society received 
from the state $150,000, which enabled it to erect a com- 
modious fireproof hall at 1300 Locust Street. No more 
useful expenditure of the moneys of the state could have 
been made, since here are preserved the records of its 
achievement which were scattered and lost from Harrisburg 

155 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

and have been laboriously gathered together by the Society. 
Its collections of books and manuscripts are in many respects 
the richest in the country. At the dedication of the new 
hall in 1910 I made an address tracing its origin and devel- 
opment which has since been printed. The institution 
has been a marvelous instance of steady progress in resources 
and accomplishment. When I became a member John 
William Wallace was the president, a man of broad culture, 
who early in life attracted attention at home and in Europe 
by his book upon The Reporters of law cases. He had been 
reporter for the Supreme Court of the United States. He 
wrote attractively and presided at the meetings grace- 
fully. A descendant of the Bradfords, the early printers, 
he saw to it that during his regime the books printed by 
them were sedulously collected. When he died, Brinton 
Coxe succeeded. A descendant of Dr. Daniel Coxe, one of 
the proprietors of West Jersey, and, coming of a family 
which had made a fortune from coal lands, he was much 
a gentleman of leisure. He had written books of value 
and was generous in his gifts. He had dark eyes, side 
whiskers and a kindly manner, but it was nervous torture 
for him to appear in public, and he fumbled through to 
the end of what little he had to say. He was succeeded 
by Dr. Charles J. Stills, of an old Swedish family, who had 
been provost of the University of Pennsylvania and had 
the benefit of wide literary experience and cultivation. 
His Life of Wayne, written in old age, and too hurriedly, 
is disappointing, but his Life of William Smith and his 
pamphlet upon How a Free People Conduct a Great War 
are both admirable studies. He left a large bequest to 
the Society. But its success did not at all depend upon 
the efforts of its presidents. Whenever human institu- 
tions thrive, whether they be political, literary or theo- 
logical, it is because there is connected with the organization 
some person of intelligence who has its interests at heart, 
who is willing to work with head and hands, who is ready 
156 



LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

to sacrifice himself, if need be — and generally he has to — 
and who selects and sets aside the ostensible heads with 
a view to the welfare of the cause. The vestrjTnan of the 
church never becomes a bishop and the boss of the party 
never reaches the presidency. 

An insignificant looking little man named John 
Jordan, Jr., retired from business, with dark eyes, weighing 
about one hundred and twenty pounds, with a low voice, 
wearing a wig, and possessing a will, who could not make 
a speech and never wrote a book, guided the fortunes of 
the Society. What he said was done. If money was 
needed he gave it. If he saw a description of a rare book 
in a catalogue it was bought. He belonged to the Moravian 
Church and hence it happens that our shelves smile with 
the richness of the collections of the literature of the fol- 
lowers of John Huss and Ludwig, Count Zinzendorff. 
At every dinner of the Society his memory is toasted. 
After him came Frederick D. Stone, ruddy, stout and 
sandy. He had failed in business, but he had capacity, 
nevertheless. He had no pecuniary resources, but he had 
a keen scent, was specially well informed with regard to 
events of the Revolutionary War and was ever alert in 
watching for opportunities to aid the institution. He 
selected the members of the council and the officials, and 
men who were loud in their denunciations of Quay and 
Hanna submitted quietly to the domination of Stone. 

A more striking figure than either was Charles R. Hilde- 
burn. He came out of a drug store and was substantially 
without education. He was young, thin and had no stomach 
which could digest. He was ever on the wire edge of 
nervous overthrow. He did not chew tobacco, but he ate 
it. He could not bear stimulants and used them to excess. 
Violent and domineering, he quarreled with everybody. 
He worked until four o'clock in the morning and slept 
with difficulty. But he had unbounded energy and appre- 
ciation of imprints, typography and the importance of a 

157 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

book, seen for the first time, which amounted almost to 
genius. He did much to enhance the value of the collec- 
tions and in his Issues of the Press of Pennsylvania, in the 
production of which I aided him materially, he produced 
a book which is a marvel of research. One day he came to 
consult with me. We differed about the date of an imprint 
or some such trifle. He called me a liar, and I ordered 
him out of the office. He could not help yielding to impulse. 
He died in young manhood and is likewise gratefully 
remembered. 

On the third of April, 1888, Colonel Oliver C. Bosby- 
shell, who was one of the First Defenders to reach Washing- 
ton on April 18, 1861, Dr. Herman Burgin, Horace Burgin, 
Major J. Edward Carpenter, who took part in Keenan's 
charge at Chancellorsville, Robert P. Dechert, William C. 
Houston, Charles Marshall, John W. Jordan, J. Granville 
Leach, William Brooke Rawle, Richard M. Cadwalader, 
William Wayne and myself, met in the dingy little office 
of Herman Burgin and organized the Pennsylvania Society 
Sons of the Revolution, composed of the descendants of 
those who participated in the War of the Revolution. 
It has since grown to a membership of over a thousand 
and every year gives a reception on the twenty-second 
of February, attends a service at Christ Church on the 
anniversary of the beginning of the encampment at Valley 
Forge, and makes a pilgrimage to some revolutionary 
field in June on the anniversary of the evacuation of that 
camp. 

I have made addresses before the members — once in 
the State House, twice at Valley Forge, once at Penny- 
packer's Mills and once at Neshaminy, and, as chairman 
of a committee, raised most of the moneys they now have 
with which to erect a statue to Anthony Wayne. In the 
Decennial Register of the Society, published in 1898, are 
copies of an original map of Valley Forge which I secured 
in Amsterdam, and of the music of one of the dances of the 
158 



LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

Meschianza, also discovered by me, both of them of great 
interest because of the hght they throw upon that struggle. 

I still remember the day when, being than a child 
seven years of age, perhaps, I picked up in the garden a 
piece of white flint of curious shape and took it to my 
father to make inquiries. I recall with complete distinct- 
ness, after so many impressions made since have disappeared, 
its shape, the corner of the garden in which it lay, and 
even the time of the day. He explained to me that I had 
found an arrow head made by the Indians and he pointed 
out to me the details of manufacture and the method of 
use. A very slight incident often is not only the beginning 
of habit, but the turning point of character. A career 
is often j&xed by the most trivial of occurrences. If any 
fact, no matter how comparatively unimportant it seemed, 
could be omitted from the past, the whole history of the 
world would be changed. If three hundred years ago a 
young man had not, upon a summer evening, gone out to 
the garden gate, George Washington would never have 
been born, and the colonies perhaps would have remained 
dependencies. If a Dutchman had lost instead of making 
a projfit on a negro slave three hundred years ago there 
might have been no Battle at Gettysburg. 

John H. Converse once told me that when he was a 
young man, anxiously seeking an opportunity in life, he 
was offered a clerkship at a small salary in Chicago and 
had made all of his arrangements to go there gladly. At 
the last moment some unexpected event occurred to pre- 
vent, and he remained in Philadelphia to become, eventually, 
the head of the Baldwin Locomotive Works. 

I never overcame the tendency which started when 
my father enabled me to understand the significance of 
the piece of quartz I had picked up, and all through my 
boyhood and young manhood, upon occasion, I hunted 
through the fields, which had been plowed for corn, for 
the implements lost or thrown away by the Indians, and 

159 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

my somewhat extensive collection is preserved at Penny- 
packer's Mills. Once, on the high ground on the opposite 
side of the Schuylkill from Phcenixville, I found a cache 
of fifty-six stone blades, six inches long and two and a 
half inches in width, made of argillite, blue within, oxydized 
and green without. At Green Hill, a romantic spot a mile 
below Phcenixville, overlooking the river, now being torn 
to pieces and ruined by a brickyard, was the site of an 
Indian village where the implements were numerous. 
I found there on one occasion a hammer, neatly fashioned, 
of quartz, which gave evidence that in their work the Indians 
were not without the artistic sense. 

When I went to the city to live, where there were no 
such opportunities, I naturally enough turned to the gather- 
ing of books, with the result that when I went to Harrisburg 
in 1903 I left locked up in my house, 1540 North Fifteenth 
Street, in Philadelphia, over ten thousand volumes. In 
the main they were books relating to Pennsylvania and 
early imprints of the province and the state. It was the 
most complete collection of material of that kind which 
any individual had ever possessed, and in some respects 
was unequaled by any public hbrary. The Boston Public 
Library has made it a policy to collect the books printed 
by Franklin and had succeeded in securing about eighty, 
while I had about two hundred and fifty. There were 
also the most complete collections of the publications of 
Ephrata, of the Sowers in Germantown, and of Robert 
Bell in Philadelphia, to whom must be accorded the credit 
of introducing literature into America. Sower printed the 
Testament in German seven times, at Germantown, before 
it appeared anywhere in America in Enghsh, and I still 
possess the only complete set of these Testaments. My 
library contained a full representation of the imprints of 
the inland towns of Pennsylvania, a copy of the Nuremhurg 
Chronicle of 1493, a fair set of the Sessions Laws of Pennsyl- 
vania, the early magazines and newspapers, the finest known 
160 



LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

set of The Portfolio, the fullest collection of Vorschrifften, 
representing the art of the Germans of the state, the best 
collection of the literature of the Mennonites and the 
Schwenkfelders, an Aitken Bible, the first American Bible 
in English, a set of original war maps of the battles of the 
Revolution, the autobiography in manuscript of Benjamin 
West, his original study of the Death of Wolfe, an auto- 
graph portrait of West and a portrait of Franklin by West. 
These are sufficient to indicate its importance. 

After I had been separated from my books for over two 
years, and since they prevented any other use of the house 
and were subject to the danger of fire and thieves, I selected 
about two thousand volumes, including the large mass 
of family literature, the local books and those relating 
to the Mennonites and Schwenkfelders, and sold the rest. 
Those sold were described in eight catalogues making 
four large octavo volumes which form a full record of 
original sources for the history of Pennsylvania. My 
collection of Frankliniana has been called by Tregaskis 
of London "unrivalled." Certainly it was more com- 
prehensive than that of Henry Stevens, for which the 
Government of the United States paid $35,000. The 
ownership of these books gave me the opportunity to 
understand Franklin in one phase of his work, with the 
result that my estimate of his achievement is far from the 
conventional standard. He was a job printer. He printed 
solely for gain and nothing that can be regarded as a con- 
tribution to learning or literature came from his press 
He printed the Votes of Assembly and the Sessions Laws, 
the opportunity for doing which he secured through political 
influence, and when Benjamin Lay paid him for printing 
one of the earliest books against slave-keepers, it appeared 
without his imprint because it was an unpopular effort. 
His most important work in the way of his art was the 
part he took in publishing SewelFs History of the Quakers, 
but that was given to him by Keimer, the generous old 

11 161 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

enthusiast of whom he speaks so slightingly in his auto- 
biography. He was the genius of worldly wisdom. He 
remained with the Quakers so long as they retained power 
and left them when they lost it. He secured the favors of 
women without marriage. He gave to the Pennsylvania 
Hospital the outlawed debts of his firm, which had no 
value because uncollectible, and gained a reputation for 
philanthropy. The Library Company of Philadelphia 
has been called the Franklin Library, although it con- 
tains the really valuable collection made by James Logan, 
and its records show that Thomas Bond bought and gave 
to it Franklin's newspaper and Franklin gave to it prac- 
tically nothing. He claimed to have founded the University 
of Pennsylvania, because he wrote a pamphlet, although 
he endeavored to prevent Dr. William Smith, the provost 
and real founder, from getting money in England for its 
support. He claimed to have founded the American 
Philosophical Society, although its minutes show that he 
never read a scientific paper before it and while president 
even failed to attend the meetings. 

My books came to me in all kinds of ways, and from 
over the earth, and I became known to the dealers and 
writers not only at home but in Amsterdam, London and 
Berlin. Some of the incidents which occur in the search 
for out-of-the-way treasures are both romantic and dramatic. 
Gus Egolf, short and stout, with a wen on the back of his 
neck nearly as large as his head, a keen dealer in old furniture 
and old books, lived and still lives in Norristown, where 
he has a store. Often I went "incog" in an old suit and 
broken hat with him to the sales of the German farmers 
in the country and I have bought as many as a three- 
bushel-bag full of books at a sale. The auctioneer would 
hold them up at a window, half a dozen at a time, and 
knock them down for a few pennies. There was little or 
no opportunity for preliminary examination and often 
the purchase proved to be of little value, but every once 
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LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

in a while there turned up a Franklin, an Ephrata or a 
Sower imprint. In this way I secured nearly all of my 
Schwenkfelder literature. Of the Reformers, Luther was 
a charcoal burner; Calvin was a peasant; and among 
them all the only man of long lineage and high culture 
was Caspar Schwenkfeld von Ossing, a nobleman of Silesia. 
He taught a system of sweet and pure theology which, 
carried through the Mennonites of Holland to England, 
led to the origin of the Quakers. His treatises were pub- 
lished in quarto form, as they were written, from about 
1526 to about 1560, and are much in demand in the hbraries 
of Europe. But since nearly all of his sect came to Pennsyl- 
vania in 1734, these books are found here almost exclusively. 
In my library are over ninety of the original issues and 
almost all of them. The sect being comparatively few in 
numbers, their literature was almost entirely produced in 
manuscript after they came to Pennsylvania — neatly 
written, often beautifully illuminated, strongly bound and 
carefully preserved. The Schwenkf elders arrived on the 
24th of September (1734), and set that day apart as an 
annual day of thanksgiving or "Gedachtniss Tag," and 
they have maintained its observance ever since, and in 
this respect stand alone. Their books, their woolen 
spreads, their handsomely carved and inlaid furniture, 
and the sweet faces of the women in their plain caps and 
dresses all tell of inherited cultivation. At their sales 
all were invited to dinner, whether or not anything was 
bought, and everything on the table — from ham and eggs 
to molasses pies — was tempting. In the cities I have 
often seen people acting on the assumption, and even 
heard them boasting, of their ancestral achievement with 
very little evidence in proof, and I have gone to a Schwenk- 
felder home where lay on a table, without ostentation, 
a folio manuscript written by some learned and devout 
forefather three hundred years ago. Among them I found 
an early edition of Savonarola, an early edition of the 

163 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Imitation of Christ, a copy of the Anabaptist translation 
of the Prophets by Ludwig Hetzer and Hans Denck, four 
editions of the hymn book of the followers of John Huss, 
which is a great rarity in Europe, a manuscript of the 
hymn written by George Weiss for the first Gedachtniss 
Tag in 1735, many manuscripts written upon the paper 
made at the Rittenhouse Paper Mill on the Wissahickon, 
the earliest in America. 

Among the Mennonites along the Skippack, a thrifty 
and more numerous but less literary people, I found 
a copy of the first German edition of the Fundamentum 
of Menno Simons, published in the Palatinate in 1575; 
the two editions of the Schulordnung of Christopher Dock 
(the earliest American essay on pedagogy) ; the Geistliches 
Magazien of Saur (our earliest religious magazine); a 
copy of the work of Henry Funk, the Mennonite preacher 
on the Indian Creek in Montgomery Coimty, Pa., printed 
by Armbruster in Philadelphia in 1763 ; but most important 
of all, the great Martyr Book of Van Braght, the most impos- 
ing literary production of colonial America, printed at 
Ephrata in 1749. I wrote an essay upon it and made it 
widely known. Henry Funk and Dielman Kolb of Skippack 
supervised the translation and I was fortunate enough to 
find the specially bound copy which belonged to Funk 
with his autograph in it and likewise the copy which 
belonged to Jacob Kolb, brother of Diehnan, and the 
copy retained in the cloister at Ephrata by ''Bruder Amos." 

There had been a long-standing controversy in Holland 
over the dates of the birth and death of Menno Simons, 
the distinctive Reformer of the Netherlands, one set of 
scholars contending for 1492-1559 and the other for 1496- 
1561. When I first became interested in the subject I 
wondered how it arose, since in the Dutch edition of his 
works in foho, published in 1681, there appeared his state- 
ment of when he left the Roman Catholic Church and 
how old he was at the time. Later I discovered, however, 
164 



LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

that in the earUer edition of 1646 this statement did not 
appear, thus proving that somebody had inserted it later. 
In the controversy one of the authorities relied upon was 
Gerhard Roosen, a noted preacher who died in 1711 at 
Hamburg, aged a hundred years, and whose grandmother 
had known Menno personally. One day I received a letter 
from a man out in Ohio saying he had an old Menno Simons 
book which he would sell to me for two dollars. Though 
this was the only description and nothing could be told 
about condition and little about substance, it was not much 
to risk and I wrote to him to send it to me by express. 
When it arrived, behold, it was a copy of the 1646 edition 
of the works of Menno which had belonged to Gerhard 
Roosen. In it Roosen had made a number of notes in 
manuscript and among others one which told of a visit 
he had made in 1649 with Peter Jans Moyer and Tobias 
Govertz van den Wijngaert to the grave of Menno, that 
he was born in 1492 and died in 1559 and was buried in 
his own cabbage garden. I sent the information, thus 
remarkably and accidently discovered, to Dr. Scheffer, 
of Amsterdam, who embodied it in an article printed in 
the Doopsgezinde Bijdragen, and in this way in America 
was settled an uncertain question of the remote past in 
Europe which their libraries and scholars could not deter- 
mine. 

In the shop of David McKay, on Ninth Street above 
Walnut, lay a pile of religious and, therefore, seemingly 
pecuniarily valueless books which had just come in from 
the country. But among them I found a fine copy of 
Truth Exalted, the first book printed by William Bradford 
in New York, which, in the judgment of experts, had dis- 
placed the Laws, before regarded as the first, and the 
latter had brought at auction $1,600. McKay sold^it 
to me with two or three other books for a dollar. 

In the auction room of Davis and Harvey in a corner 
lay a heap of books which had the appearance of rubbish. 

165 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Out of it I picked an old Dutch book. Said Henkels, "If 
you want that, take it along." It proved to be the first 
book in Dutch in America, a catechism of the Reformed 
Church written in Albany, printed by Bradford and before 
unknown. 

William Brotherhead had a second-hand book store 
on South Street west of Broad. From his shelves I selected 
a little volume of poems by Edgar Allan Poe, printed when 
he was a cadet at West Point by Elam Bliss, which had 
been thrown away by the Cadwalader family and for which 
I paid sixty cents. I had no knowledge of Poe editions 
and was not seeking it, but there is an instinct born within 
which guides a man in these pursuits. The day was one 
of idleness and I went from there to the auction rooms to 
look over a library offered for sale. At the time George P. 
Philes, a very wise man in his knowledge of books, and 
others of the craft were gathered in an inner room, and 
as I wandered about I overheard the conversation. One 
of them said: "I wonder whether that second edition of 
Poe will ever turn up again?" The remark caught my 
attention and I stepped closer. 

"Is it a scarce book?" I inquired. 

"Did you ever see a copy?" came the query instead 
of a response. 

"Yes." 

"Where?" 

"I have one in my pocket." 

I produced it and astonishment gathered over their 
faces. 

"Do you know what that book brought in the Brinley 
sale?" asked Philes. 

"No, I don't know what it brought in the Brinley 
sale." 

"One hundred and fifty dollars." 

"I am very glad to hear it." 

At this time there was a man in town named Frank E. 
166 



LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

Marshall, who had been a flour merchant, as sharp as a 
scythe-blade, who had turned his attention to books, 
book-plates and autographs. At a sale appeared a letter 
written by James Wilson, the Philadelphia lawyer who 
did the most in preparing the Constitution of the United 
States in 1787, and became a Justice of the Supreme Court 
of the United States, to George Washington, introducing 
to him Colonel Ephraim Blaine, the grandfather of James 
G. Blaine. I wanted the letter. Marshall bought it for 
thirty-three dollars. Soon it became noised about over 
the town in this narrow sphere that I had found the Poe 
and it was not long before Marshall, who was in a heat 
over the pursuit of material relating to Poe, came to me 
to try his luck. I said to him, "Marshall, you and I under- 
stand the situation perfectly. We never make the useless 
inquiry what was paid for a thing. I do not care for the 
Poe and you have some things I should like to have. If 
you will make up enough of them to equal in market value 
the Poe, you may have it. He finally gave me the Wilson 
letter, a copy of the Philadelphia edition of the Yellow 
Plush Papers, which, strange to say, is the proof that the 
first publication of a book of Thackeray occurred in 
Philadelphia, The Simple Cobbler of Agawam and two or 
three Franklin imprints, and carried off the book he wanted. 
At a sale at the house of a Schwenkfelder family named 
Kriebel, in Montgomery County, I bought a quantity of 
material which was sent to my office at 209 South Sixth 
Street and there, after selecting whatever appeared to be 
of importance, the residuum of imperfect and more recent 
papers was thrown on a shelf and there lay for years. It 
was then carried up to my office at Broad and Chestnut 
streets and likewise left neglected. It was then taken to 
my home and piled on an upper shelf. One rainy Sunday 
afternoon I was turning it over, when the peculiar words 
concerning a turtle dove singing in the wilderness caught 
my attention and suggested Ephrata. Thoroughly aroused, 

167 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

I examined it critically and found a date too early for the 
Dunkers of Ephrata. Then I found some initials and 
recognized the chirography of Johannes Kelpius. Com- 
parison made the inference certain. The hymn book of 
the Hermits of the Wissahickon with hymns written by 
Kelpius, Seelig and Koster lay before me and one of the 
most important discoveries I ever made occurred amid 
the waste in my own Hbrary. 

I made a visit to Samuel Pennypacker, a farmer hving 
at the upper end of The Trappe, who entertained me at 
dinner sitting on a long bench before a table without cloth 
or napkins, and with the food for the family in one large 
dish in the center. He gave to me an old Bible which he 
said was of no use to him and which had been thrown with 
some other stuff into a worn-out clothes basket in the 
garret. It proved to be the Bible which belonged to my 
great -great -great -grandmother's grandfather, printed at 
Heidelberg in 1568, containing a family record and many 
interesting manuscript notes, which has now been in the 
family for ten generations and much antedating every 
other family possession. 

I sadly wanted a letter of Washington written at Penny- 
packer's Mills and sought for it long and earnestly. Once 
it seemed to be within my grasp. The letters of Israel 
Putnam, taken out to Ohio by Rufi^is Putnam, were found 
in a garret there and published in a Chicago newspaper. 
Washington had written to him to send on a reinforcement 
of a thousand men from Peekskill. Fearing his letter had 
miscarried, he wrote again in almost the same words. Here 
were two letters almost in duphcate, and the second one 
was dated at PennjT^acker's Mills. I groveled before the 
owner, offering him money, another letter of Washington 
of greater importance, and whatever inducements I could 
think of, but he was obdurate and my efforts were all in 
vain. Moses Pollock kept a book store in the second 
story of a building on the south side of Commerce Street 
168 



LITTERATEUR AND BOOK-HUNTER 

west of Fifth, a Hebrew, nearly eighty years of age, with 
rare intelligence and abundant information. Business 
had long swept away to other parts of the city and only 
a select few knew of his existence. Having sufficient 
substance, he made no effort to sell and ever rejoiced when 
the customer departed, and regretted when he took any- 
thing along. One of the sorrows of Pollock's life was that 
he had sold the Bradford Laws to Dr. Brinley for S16 and 
had seen it later produce $1,600, and he explained the 
transaction to me rather pathetically that the book had 
lain around his store for thirty years and no one ever 
wanted it. In the rear of his office was a fireproof in which 
he kept locked up rarities which no one ever saw. One 
day something softened his heart and he opened this fire- 
proof and brought out a bundle of papers which he put 
down on the table before me. I proceeded to open and 
examine them. There were some Cincinnati pamphlets, 
some Franklin imprints and along with some other papers, 
a folio letter of Washington written from Pennypacker's 
Mills to John Hancock, telling him of the council of war 
held in the house which determined to fight the Battle 
of Germantown. The time had come. Said I : 

"Pollock, I must have that letter. You can make any 
bargain you choose, but I must have that letter." And 
throwing myself upon his mercy, I explained to him the 
reasons. I said further: 

"I have an important letter of Washington which I 
will bring down and show you." 

My letter was a fine foHo in which the General told the 
Commissary of Prisoners that Cornwallis was not to be 
exchanged. After seeing it. Pollock did not need to be 
informed of its military consequence. Said he: 

"You have a couple of books I should like." My reply 
was: 

"You can have them." 

I gave him the letter about Cornwallis and the two books 

169 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

and went away with the other letter rejoicing. The story 
has a sequel. When Pollock died his things were sold and 
among them was my CornwalUs letter. It brought $850. 
Mine Hes in a drawer in the house, Uke a corner-stone which 
could not be sold or removed, and has cost me $850 beside 
two books. 

Brotherhead, in 1898, published a little book upon the 
book-sellers and book-hunters of the city in which he gives 
the following kindly, but not altogether complimentary, 
description of myself: 

" The true bibliomaniac, I am sorry again to have to repeat, 
is a rarissimo — nearly as scarce as the dodo. We have a few 
that collect books and have fine libraries; but the true Dibdin 
man — the man that cannot pass an old book store, or even an old 
junk shop; that will travel miles to enrich his collection; that 
has not time even to dress decently; that Uves in his library, 
sleeps in it, surrounded by folios, quartos, in fact, every size; 
that eats his meals there; that smokes his pipe; whose atmosphere 
smells musty, and cleanHness is almost a vice — this class of men 
are rare. I do not say all these pecularities are even necessary or 
desirable, but such men do live, have lived, and no doubt will 
always live. 

"I know one man in this city, the Honorable Judge Penny- 
packer, who possesses the true spirit of a bibliomaniac. His 
specialty is early American imprints and nearly all Pennsylvania 
early imprints. It is a pleasure to meet him. He is suave, affable 
and kind to all, and extremely Hberal in his dealings." 



170 



CHAPTER VII 

Reformer 

THE prevailing sentiment in Chester County during 
the time of my early life there was that it was the 
duty of all men to show an interest and even to 
participate in the management of public affairs. 
Many of the youths about to enter upon the struggles that 
confronted them had some ambition in the direction of 
seeking public station. In any event, they had a real con- 
cern for, and earnestly discussed the acts and the merits of 
officials, whether executive or representative. As one of 
them I saw, or thought that I saw, much that needed 
improvement and I was altogether ready to take hold some- 
where and make an effort to have the evils which afflicted 
the administration of pubhc affairs corrected. My experi- 
ence had not been sufficient, nor was my philosophy subtle 
enough, to enable me to see that while there is much in the 
conduct of men that is imperfect, such imperfection is at 
least as great among those who narrate and comment as 
among those who do the work of the world. What appeared 
in print was accepted as the truth, and there my reasoning 
began. It needed to go much deeper. The feeling in the 
county was very antagonistic to Simon Cameron, who was 
then a controlling factor in the Republican party in the state, 
and with that feeling the members of my own family, which 
for over half a century had been active in county affairs, 
were in entire accord. I regarded him as a malign influence 
which was, through the efforts of those imbued with a due 
regard for the public welfare, to be in some way or other 
overcome. The entire line of this political thought was that 
a Democrat was an obnoxious person who had been helping 

171 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

his friends in a wicked attempt to destroy the government, 
and in order that he might be continuously and forever 
repressed it was necessary to purify the Repubhcan party by 
the elimination of Cameron and of those in combination with 
him. 

Later I went to the city. In the boarding house on the 
north side of Chestnut Street below Fifth there boarded 
a man named 0. G. Hempstead who had been appointed 
from some interior county to a position in the custom house, 
nearly opposite. Later he grew into a large business con- 
nected with importations, and his sons are prosperous. On 
one occasion Hempstead had me appointed a clerk of a 
precinct election board at which I earned five dollars and 
started me on my official career. Afterward, taking rooms 
on Eighth Street below Walnut and becoming a resident of 
the first division of the Eighth ward of the city, I sought 
the opportunity to participate in its local affairs. John C. 
Martin, member of common council, a native of Maryland, 
partially paralyzed, keen, bright and active, was the ward 
leader of the Republican party, and he Hved in the same 
precinct. I was fortunate enough to get into his good graces, 
although we had a superabundant supply of ambition and 
capacity. Among those taking an active part were: A. E. 
Smith, a small contractor, whose sons I believe have made 
fortunes out of the business as it extended; and Charles A. 
Porter, who had lately arrived from Ohio, barefooted and 
penniless, and by doing little chores around the house of a 
fire engine company, had found there a place to sleep. 
Later he acquired a fortune, bought an expensive house on 
North Broad Street, secured extensive contracts for sewers 
and reservoirs, developed into a power in the politics of the 
city and state and became a member of the state senate. 

Charles H. T. CoUis had just returned from the war. 
An office boy in the office of John M. Read, who became 
Chief Justice, that influential gentleman made a pet of him 
and advanced his fortunes. Collis took a regiment of 
172 



REFORMER 

zouaves into the war and became a brigadier-general. 
Such a condition of things always arouses envy and opposi- 
tion, and Collis was ever followed by the stories of incapacity 
and even of lack of courage. I do not believe any of them. 
He suffered from the disadvantages of a man who pursues 
fortune too eagerly and he was not always equipped, but he 
had energy and alertness and I have seen him display a 
brave spirit where it was required. He became city solicitor 
for Philadelphia, married a beautiful woman and removed 
to New York. I wrote the pronunciamentos, served on the 
election board, became a member of the Executive Com- 
mittee for the ward, went to the judicial convention and 
voted for the nomination of James T. Mitchell when first 
he became a judge, and in 1868 I was elected a member of 
the school board. 

Turbulence very often marked the political struggles. 
On one occasion a contest arose at the primary election 
over the selection of delegates to the nominating conventions, 
the chief controversy being over the naming of a sheriff. 
Collis was on the regular ticket as a delegate to this con- 
vention and it was arranged that I should go to the conven- 
tion to nominate a city solicitor. Just before the polls 
closed a man came up to the window to vote; while the 
clerk was looking up his name, he reached in through the 
window, seized the ballot box and ran with it down the 
street and scattered the ballots in the gutters for two 
squares. It was done very suddenly; his friends stood in 
the way to block pursuit and he succeeded in escaping. He 
left an angry lot of politicians around the polls. We went 
to a neighboring tavern, I drew up a lot of affidavits to the 
effect that in our judgment we had a large majority of the 
votes cast, and upon these credentials we secured our seats 
in the conventions. A little fellow, hardlj^ larger than a 
dwarf, with a squeaky voice, named Robert Renshaw, and 
who was always called the "Colonel," had a room in the 
Press Building, where he slept. His appearance, claiming 

173 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

the right to vote, was always the signal for an outbreak, but 
he had more pluck than strength and could not be driven 
away. 

In 1875, with my mother, wife and two children, I went 
to hve at 1540 North Fifteenth Street, in the Twenty-ninth 
ward, and this continued to be my home for the next twenty- 
seven years. At this time the ward leader was Hamilton 
Disston, and a young man named William U. Moyer repre- 
sented him in all active movements. Again I went to the 
executive committee. Once I broached the subject of 
going to councils, and Moyer said it would suit him very 
well, but I would have to arrange the matter with Disston 
This did not suit me, since I had no thought of belonging to 
anybody there. I dropped the subject and every day grew 
more independent. Nelson F. Evans, a very worthy man 
with Calvinistic tendencies, president of a bank, who a few 
years later went to prison for the technical violation of some 
statute, Major William H. Lambert, the Philadelphia repre- 
sentative of the New York Mutual Life Insurance Company, 
with myself and some others, undertook to revolutionize 
the precinct. We hired a hall, notified every Republican, 
held a meeting which was largely attended and selected a 
ticket. For a time it looked as though we would succeed, 
but we failed at the last moment through the better disci- 
pline of our opponents and the superior practical knowledge 
which comes with it. The evening of the primary election 
turned out to be cold, and blasts of snow filled the air. The 
well-to-do citizens upon whom we relied sat at home by their 
fires in comfort. Their servants rode in carriages, hired by 
the more shrewd regulars, to the polls and voted against us. 
However, we caused anxiety and almost won. 

About this time the preliminary symptoms were disclosed 
of a concerted effort upon the part of those in control of 
the Repubhcan party to continue General Grant in the 
presidency after the expiration of his eight years of service 
in that office. I had never been very enthusiastic in my 
174 



REFORMER 

admiration for Grant, although recognizing his great force 
of character; as a general his campaigns displayed more 
resolution than military skill. His ultimate great success 
depended upon the fact that Meade had delivered the 
crushing blow to the main army of the rebels at Gettysburg. 
His unjust use of the power of the presidency to elevate 
Sheridan, with much less achievement, to the head of the 
army over Meade was probably influenced by his recognition 
of that fact. His conduct of the presidential office was 
coarse, and it seemed to me that with his temperament and 
the hold which his military achievement gave him upon the 
minds of the people and his willingness to continue in the 
office indefinitely, he was dangerous to the institutions of 
the country. In February, 1880, there was organized in 
Philadelphia a movement with the imposing title of ''The 
National Republican League." William Rotch Wister, a 
distinguished lawyer, was chairman; Charles Wheeler, of 
the wealthy iron firm of Morris, Wheeler & Co., whose 
daughter later married a Japanese and went to Japan to 
live, was the treasurer; and Hampton L. Carson, later 
Attorney General for the Commonwealth, was the secretary; 
Wharton Barker, a banker, then supposed to be worth a 
million dollars; John McLaughlin; Henry C. Lea, the 
famous historian; Samuel W. Pennypacker; T. Morris 
Perot; Wayne MacVeagh, who reaped reward from the 
movement; Joseph G. Rosengarten, a man of letters, whose 
family gathered a fortune from quinine; E. Dunbar Lock- 
wood, a worthy man in a chronic attitude of criticism, and 
J. Lapsley Wilson, constituted the executive committee. 
They sent an address signed by about one hundred and fifty 
influential citizens to the State Convention which contained 
this patent threat: "We, therefore, beg of you so to act that 
the influence of the great State of Pennsylvania may be 
thrown in favor of one who can be conscientiously supported 
and against those whom the honest voter may feel himself 
obliged to oppose at the polls." There was wide comment 

175 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

upon this address and attitude over the country. So far as 
I know, all of these men had burned their bridges and would 
have voted against Grant had he been nominated for a 
third term. In a second circular the demands of the League 
were expressed in the phrase, ''No third term, a party with- 
out a master, and a candidate without a stain" — language 
due to MacVeagh. In a third circular the name of McManes 
of Philadelphia was mentioned in association with that of 
Tweed of New York, who not long before had been sent to 
prison. 

James McManes, a thrifty, capable and vigorous Irish- 
man, who accumulated a large fortune in street railways, 
was then at the head of the Republican organization in 
Philadelphia. He was an absolute autocrat, who tolerated 
no difference in opinion in the ranks. The use of the word 
"boss," which has since become so prevalent in America, 
began with this circular and was the discovery of Henry C. 
Lea. McManes was the leading character in a book entitled 
Solid for Mulhooly, which was widely read and ran through 
several editions. McManes, who naturally did not appre- 
ciate this notoriety, meeting with E. Dunbar Lockwood at 
The Union League a few days after the issue of the circular, 
proceeded to give him a thrashing, upon the theory that he 
was the author. It was a case, however, of vicarious sacri- 
fice. The circular was written by Henry C. Lea, with some 
emendations by me, and the reference to McManes was the 
work of Lea. 

In May, a few weeks later, the League, becoming more 
decided as time passed, determined that they ''will not vote 
under any circumstances for General Grant, but will support 
any other nominee of the convention, " and that a delegation 
should be sent to the nominating convention at Chicago. 
Those selected were Wharton Barker, Wayne MacVeagh, 
T. Morris Perot, John McLaughlin, Edward R. Wood, 
Stuart Wood, Hampton L. Carson, Samuel W. Pennj'packer, 
Henry Reed and Rudolph Blankenburg. Though they were 
176 



REFORMER 

in dead earnest, with the possible exception of MacVeagh, 
the real directive force was Barker, a not altogether wise, 
but sincere and vigorous personality, up to that time in 
every way successful and ambitious to do some broad and 
important work. He had been corresponding for several 
years with James A. Garfield, of Ohio, about the tariff, had 
often told me that Garfield was the man to be next elected 
to the presidency, and he started out with the expressed 
and determined purpose to use every effort in this direction. 
With this view MacVeagh was not in accord. At this time 
there was a banking firm in Hazleton, Pa., doing business 
as Pardee, Markle & Grier, in which Ario Pardee, the 
millionaire, supplied most of the capital and W. A. M. 
Grier was the active partner. Through the advice of 
Barker, with whom his firm had many transactions, Grier 
had become a client of mine. He had been elected a delegate 
to the National Convention, and we both did all we could to 
persuade him to vote for Garfield. We went to Chicago in 
a style likely to make some impression. We had a special 
car and all of the concomitants. Others on their way to 
Chicago, learning that we were comfortable, came into our 
car to spend their time in our company and enabled us to 
proselyte. Among them were Robert G. Ingersoll, big, 
good-hearted and jovial, and Stewart L. Woodford, then 
District Attorney for New York and afterward Minister to 
Spain. Ingersoll was opposed to a third term, but Woodford 
necessarily favored the nomination of Grant. Woodford, 
being in the camp of the enemy, was inclined to be silent. 

'^Come, cheer up, man," said Ingersoll. ''Don't be so 
solemn." 

"I am not all the while making a noise, " was the reply. 

"Oh," said Ingersoll, "you remind me of the old farmer 
who loaded up a pig and a sheep to take to market. The 
sheep went along quietly, but the pig kept up such a squeak- 
ing that the farmer got angry. Finally he said to the pig, 
"Look at that sheep, see how nicely he goes along." "Yes, " 

12 177 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

said the pig, "but the damned fool don't know where he is 
going." 

The appHcation to Woodford's course was pointed. 

Whether or not it can be claimed for any man that he 
brought about the nomination of the President of the 
United States, that result always being the outcome of the 
play of forces in existence at the time, certain it is that 
while three hundred and six stalwarts stood by Grant to the 
end, Grier began to vote for Garfield on the second ballot 
and continued until over a hundred had been cast and until 
the convention accepted that candidate. In a published 
interview, a day or two later, he said that Barker ''had as 
much to do as any other individual in bringing about the 
nomination of Garfield." The League thereupon issued a 
circular, written by me, calling upon the independent voters 
to support the nominee of the party. After the election 
Barker looked forward to being appointed Secretary of the 
Treasury and I have seen a letter of James G. Blaine, who 
became Secretary of State, giving his assent to the proposi- 
tion. For several years Barker had been the agent of the 
Government of Russia in securing the construction of vessels 
of war, and in 1880, after the convention, he went over to that 
country for the purpose of making arrangements to build 
railroads there, and while there the Czar decorated him with 
the insignia of some order of distinction. He took MacVeagh 
with him as his counsel and while en route confided his 
ambitions and was pleased to learn that in the opinion of 
MacVeagh no other course was open to Garfield. Before 
they started MacVeagh suggested that they take their 
wives with them, to which Barker assented. After their 
return, MacVeagh sent a bill for counsel fees and expenses, 
including those of his wife, and said Barker to me: 'T did 
not want to raise a question with him at that juncture, and 
like a fool I paid them all." Then MacVeagh became 
Attorney General and a member of the Cabinet. The 
reason, of course, was quite plain and it ought to have been 
178 



REFORMER 

obvious to Barker. MacVeagh was identified with the 
independents participating in all of their councils and was 
at the same time the son-in-law of Simon Cameron and, 
therefore, fitted both ways. I stood by Barker and sent a 
letter to the President in which, answering the objection of 
Barker's youth, I said: ''Though one of our younger men, 
he is the senior by several years of the ablest of the treas- 
urer's when appointed by the greatest of our presidents." 
The letter failed, but the phrase struck and was repeated to 
several persons by Garfield. 

In 1881 a Civil Service Reform Association was organized 
in Philadelphia with MacVeagh as president and myself as 
secretary. For a long time the records were kept and the 
meetings were held in my office, at No. 209 South Sixth 
Street, and their first conflict with the outside and wicked 
world I maintained in a series of letters with Howard M. 
Jenkins, afterward editor of The Friend's Intelligencer and 
author of a history of Gwynedd. He was a combative and 
able fellow, a friend of Barker, anxious for the improvement 
of public life, but he had no faith in Civil Service Reform. 
He perished by falling from a foot log over Buck Hill Falls. 
I was not altogether in sympathy with my associates in this 
work. The difference was partly fundamental. I felt that 
pretty much the whole merit of the system consisted in the 
advocacy of permanence of tenure; that is, that no one of 
the ministerial office-holders should be removed except for 
incompetence or failure in the performance in his duties, 
a reversal of the doctrine introduced by Andrew Jackson that 
to the victor belongs the spoils. They had more faith in 
the benefit of the preliminary examinations, which never 
seemed to me to be effective means of securing competent 
officials and which hamper those charged with responsibility. 
The difference was also partly political. I wanted the 
Republicans to make our public life better and their idea 
was to have these tasks accomplished by the Democrats. 
When, therefore, George William Curtis, who was president 

179 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

of the National Civil Service Reform Association, endeavored 
to throw its weight in favor of Cleveland, and against 
Blaine, he was followed by most of the active members in 
Philadelphia. I protested and wrote a letter to him which 
appeared in the New York Tribune, was issued as a campaign 
document by the Republican National Committee and sent 
all over the United States. While I have always continued 
my membership in the association, I have taken no active 
part in the conduct of its affairs since that time. As we 
look back with the light shown by subsequent development, 
we are compelled to recognize that Blaine was the most 
astute and sagacious statesman of his period, that his 
method of dealing with other countries on the two continents 
was based on correct principles and are now generally 
accepted, and that the American people displayed little 
wisdom in their treatment of him and by it lost important 
opportunities to advance their own welfare. By getting 
out of sympathy with its surroundings, the Philadelphia 
Association lost much in strength and has never recovered 
its vitality. When, as Governor, I had the opportmiity to 
put my principles into practice, could point to the fact that 
no official during my incumbency had been removed for 
political reasons and had recommended the adoption of 
Civil Service Reform by the state, the association was too 
timid to commend, and when Woodrow Wilson, who as a 
citizen had loudly advocated the system, and as a president 
at once removed an expert official in the Philadelphia Custom 
House to make way for a Democrat, overriding the request 
of the association, it was too timid to condemn. 

Into the platform of the National Republican League I 
had this plank inserted : 

"That the worst of the existing evils of our national life 
being the results of former Democratic rule should be 
remedied by the restoration, in our local, state, and national 
governments, of the tenure of routine offices for life or 
during good behavior, with the establishment of pensions 
180 



REFORMER 

for superannuated officials and merited promotion within 
each department of the public service." 

The members of the Executive Committee were now 
Wharton Barker, chairman, Samuel S. Hollingsworth, 
Samuel W. Pennypacker, Edward R. Wood, Henry Reed, 
Mayer Sulzberger and Silas W. Pettit. The fact that of 
these seven, one went to city councils, three to the bench 
and one to the governor's chair has a lesson for ambitious 
young men. The surest road to success in public life is to 
ascertain some principle, right in itself and beneficial to the 
state, and cling to it until the world understands, as in time 
it surely will. 

The importance of money is very much exaggerated. 
I have known the most successful merchant in America to 
seek the United States Senate, and a coal miner, said to be 
worth thirty millions of dollars, to seek the governorship, 
and both of them failed. The effort to build up popularity 
by promising to give the people not what they ought to 
have, but what they are crying for at the moment, to spread 
the sail for all the winds that may happen to blow is likewise 
to follow the path which ends at Sahara. 

In order to make a test of our hold upon Garfield, we 
determined upon a candidate for one of the important 
offices in Philadelphia, not one of ourselves; and Barker, 
Hollingsworth, Pettit, Wood and myself made a pilgrimage 
to Washington. One of the party suggested that before 
seeing the President, we make a call of courtesy upon the 
Attorney General. MacVeagh soon discovered our errand 
and without invitation said: ''I will go over with you," 
and at once proceeded to take charge of the party. He is 
nothing unless adroit and with an assumption that we were 
unknown introduced us to the President as very good friends 
of his from Philadelphia engaged in dilettante politics and 
seeking to better a wicked world. Garfield, robust, alert and 
cordial took the cue at once and as one speech after another 
was made wore a half-concealed smile which boded ill. 

181 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Provoked at what I regarded as an attempt to lead us into 
a cul-de-sac, I arose from the sofa on which MacVeagh and 
HoHingsworth had been sitting almost lovingly together and, 
confronting the President, I said : 

''Mr. President, these gentlemen are your friends, who 
have proven their friendship not only since but before you 
were nominated. You are in the midst of a struggle — ^you 
dared to appoint a collector in New York who did not suit 
Mr. Conkling and he is in arms against you. Mr. Cameron 
is in alliance with him and the war will soon be waged in 
Philadelphia as well. You will need real friends. We are 
here to ask this appointment not so much to advance the 
fortunes of the appointee but as an indication that you have 
given us recognition." 

The reference to Collector Robertson sobered him and 
the smile disappeared. He endeavored to parry. 

"But I have given you recognition in the appointment 
of MacVeagh." 

Here was the opportunity. I pointed my finger at 
Wayne, who too had recovered from his smile. 

"He does not answer. It is true that he is well known 
as an independent and a reformer and has taken part in all 
of our counsels. It is just as true that he is a son-in-law of 
Simon Cameron, a brother-in-law of Don Cameron, and that 
enables men to say that his appointment was as much due 
to his family associations as to his political predilections." 

A situation had been laid bare in the presence of both 
of them. All of the participants in the interview, including 
Wayne, had become as serious as owls. We had come down 
from lunar heights to bed pan. As the President dismissed 
us he shook hands and said : 

"I see you know how to take care of yourselves." 

Said Pettit: "Pennypacker, you slid over some very 
thin ice." 

Said HoHingsworth: "I don't believe a scene like that 
ever before occurred in the White House." 
182 



REFORMER 

A few days later Garfield was shot, MacVeagh dis- 
appeared from the Cabinet, and what would have been the 
outcome of our effort we never knew. The figures in the 
kaleidoscope took on other combinations. 

The National RepubHcan League extended its operations 
over the state. Senator James W. Lee of Venango County 
became chairman of the conamittee consisting of John 
Stewart, now a Justice of the Supreme Court; Hugh S. 
Flemming of Allegheny; William T. Davies of Bradford 
(afterward Lieutenant-Governor) ; J. W. M. Geist, an editor 
in Lancaster ; Thomas W. Phillips, a wealthy oil operator of 
Lawrence; Colonel William McMichael and myself. 
McMichael was the oldest son of Mayor Morton McMichael, 
a handsome fellow who had been out in the war in one of 
the western armies and, hke all of the family, had just a 
little air of stiffness and solidity. He at one time was United 
States District Attorney in Philadelphia and later went 
to New York with the thought of making a fortune in the 
practice of his profession, but met with no great success 
there. He took with him John R. Dos Passos, a curly-haired 
youth, who began his career by sweeping out the offices of 
William T. Price and is closing it with wealth and a fame 
which has extended over the country. McMichael was 
president of the Republican Invincibles, a club of men 
organized in regimental shape, wearing capes and carrying 
torches of coal oil lamps, which in its heyday was regarded 
as the best disciplined marching club in the land. I belonged 
to and later was captain of Company H. In the political 
campaigns toward the close of and following the war, the 
Invincibles marched the streets of the city and made 
excursions to the neighboring towns of Norristown, Potts- 
town, PhcBpixville, Reading, Trenton and other places. 
"Invincible in peace, invisible in war" was the description 
of The Age, but they marked a phase of the military spirit 
of the time and they always made an impression wherever 
they appeared. Sometimes there was an approach to 

183 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

actual warfare. On one occasion, under the leadership of 
Henry Todd, a brother of M. Hampton Todd, later Attorney 
General, and of a young fellow named Williams, the Invin- 
cibles stormed and gutted the headquarters of the Demo- 
cratic Keystone Club on Walnut Street. Attacks were fre- 
quently made upon the club when in line. On one occasion 
arrangements had been made to attend a meeting in the 
lower part of the city. For days beforehand it had been 
rumored that we were to be assaulted on the way. Only 
about two hundred men turned out and they were accom- 
panied by a delegation from the Harmony Engine Company, 
which occupied the sidewalks. The anticipated attack did 
not occur and late at night the club returned to headquarters 
on Fifth Street below Chestnut. At this time the Keystone 
Club was parading down Chestnut Street and some of our 
men with their capes on ran up to the corner to watch them. 
In an instant there was a collision, and right under the 
windows of the office of the mayor seven men were shot, 
including a young member of the Paul family. This event 
led to the passage of an ordnance by councils preventing 
the parading of political clubs within ten days preceding an 
election. We were once attacked in Norristown at a place 
where a stone wall ran along one side of the road. The 
assailants were repulsed and in retreat had to get over this 
wall. As they clambered up they were assisted by the 
application of torches in the rear. Among the most active 
men in the club were George Truman, an erect and athletic 
scion of a well-known Quaker family, who was later killed; 
Alexander P. Colesberry, afterward United States Marshal; 
and William B. Smith, who became mayor of the city. 

The selection of the State Committee to which I have 
referred, marked a divergence in the councils of the Inde- 
pendents. The centrifugal forces increased and tended to 
throw the movement outside of the orb and there were some 
men who were ready to leave their party. There were 
others, including myself, whose feeling was to do missionary 
184 



REFORMER 

work among the heathen at home. The committee repre- 
sented the more conservative thought. 

November 12, 1880, Edward R. Wood gave an elaborate 
dinner with a pubhc purpose. Those present, as guests, 
were : Rudolph Blankenburg, an importation from Germany, 
w^ho had succeeded in business, never able to think with any 
clearness but impelled by worthy and philanthropic impulses; 
Charles Wheeler, Franklin A. Dick, Wayne MacVeagh, 
W. Rotch Wister, Samuel W. Pennypacker, Joseph G. 
Rosengarten, Hampton L. Carson, Henry Reed, Wharton 
Barker, Edward T. Steel, E. Dunbar Lockwood, T. Morris 
Perot and Joseph L. Wilson. The affairs of the city were 
considered, and as a result of the discussion there was 
organized a committee of one hundred, which, for the next 
few years, sat in judgment upon the merits of candidates. 
Into it four of those present declined to go — Barker, 
MacVeagh, Carson and myself. 

In 1880 Charles S. Wolfe ran as an independent candidate 
for the State Treasury and polled about forty thousand 
votes, having the support of the more radical of our con- 
stituency. In 1881 Harry W. Oliver, the selection of the 
stalwarts for United States Senator, failed and, instead, 
John I. Mitchell of Tioga was elected. This result was due 
in large part to the energy and efforts of Barker and was a 
temporary success for the ''Half Breeds" whom the death 
of Garfield had deprived of control. In 1882 came the 
election of a governor. It became known that Mr. Cameron 
and the stalwarts had determined upon the nomination of 
General James A. Beaver, a lawyer and soldier, who had 
lost a leg during the war. Our committee sent out an 
address to the people urging the members of the party to go 
to the primaries and decide for themselves through their 
delegates who should be the nominee. 

Barker called a meeting at his office, which was attended 
by Senator Mitchell, Charles S. Wolfe, Henry C. Lea, 
Charles Emory Smith, editor of the Press, who had come 

185 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

into the movement, Francis B. Reeves, George E. Mapes, 
Howard M. Jenkins, Lockwood, Henry Reed, Barker, 
Perot and myself, representatives of every phase of inde- 
pendent thought. The speeches ran the gamut from my 
own conservatism to the radicahsm of Lea, who declared 
his purpose to oppose any ticket, no matter how good, which 
might be nominated by the ''bosses." Finally, under the 
advice of Mitchell, it was determined that a committee of 
five, to be appointed by him, should give the stalwarts an 
opportunity for a conference if they so desired. The mem- 
bers of this committee were Charles S. Wolfe, I. D. McKee, 
Francis B. Reeves, Senator J. W. Lee and Wharton Barker. 
On a day selected they met at the Continental Hotel M. S. 
Quay, Thomas Y. Cooper, Christopher Magee, John F. 
Hartranft, Thomas Cochran and J. Howard Reeder. The 
Independents presented a demand, in the nature of an 
ultimatum, that the slated candidates be withdrawn, the 
convention be postponed and that delegates be elected by a 
popular vote. This was not acceded to and the war went 
on. Beaver was nominated in the regular convention and 
John Stewart by the Independents, and the result was that 
after an earnest and somewhat bitter struggle Robert E. 
Pattison, a Democrat, from the office of Lewis C. Cassidy in 
Philadelphia, who had been controller of the city, was 
elected governor. In the Twenty-ninth ward, where I 
lived and where the usual Republican majority was about 
two thousand, I was nominated for the assembly by the 
Independent Republicans, was endorsed by the Democrats, 
by the Committee of One Hundred, by the temperance 
people, by the Liquor Men's League and was supported by 
editorials in all of the newspapers of the city which pointed 
out to the citizens the exceptional opportunity they had to 
secure an intelligent and upright representative. Never- 
theless, it rang to me a little hollow when I found among my 
earnest advocates Samuel Josephs, a sleek Democratic 
politician of a type none too savory, and all of the brewers 
186 



REFORMER 

who had their plants in the western part of the ward. For- 
tunately my opponent, a shrewd and capable little shoe- 
maker named James E. Romig beat me by a majority of 
four hundred and three. I won his eternal good will by 
writing him a letter of congratulation which gave him a 
novel experience. Henry Reed had his appetite whetted 
by these experiences and he went again to the Presidential 
Convention of 1884. His great-grandfather, Joseph Reed, 
had been Adjutant-General of the Continental Army. He 
was a nice, lovely, literary gentleman, of over-refined tastes 
who skimmed the surface of life like a butterfly and never 
comprehended its depths. He married a daughter of John 
Edgar Thomson, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad 
Company, and lost her fortune ; he became a judge of Court 
of Common Pleas No. 3 and found the world too rough and 
crude for him ; all men were fond of him and he died early. 
In Chicago he met a Hoosier and tried to convert him. 

''Who are you for, anyway?" inquired the delegate, who 
was inclined to be profane. 

''Benjamin Harrison," answered Reed. 

"Ben Harrison, oh, hell!" said the Hoosier. "Why, 
suppose we nominate Ben Harrison, and then you meet a 
fellow and he says to you: 'Ben Harrison is a very nice 
kind of a man, ' and you say to him, 'Yes, Ben Harrison is a 
very nice kind of a man; that's all there's to it." But 
suppose we nominate Jim Blaine. Then you meet a man 
and he says to you: 'Jim Blaine, he's a God damned thief.' 
You up and say to him : ' You're a God damned liar.' Then 
there is something in it." 

In this campaign I prepared a paper giving reasons 
why the Independents should support the nomination of 
Blaine, and we succeeded in having it signed by most of the 
men of representative character, among them including 
Barker, Wolfe, Mitchell, Blankenburg, Lewis Emery, Jr., 
Perot and others, but excluding MacVeagh and Lea, in 
every county in the state and published. Had the same 

187 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

sentiment prevailed and the same activity been displayed 
in New York, Blaine would have been elected. At this 
time I had some correspondence with a young man there 
who took the same view, named Theodore Roosevelt. 4s 
upon many other occasions, the people of Pennsylvania 
showed that they had a keener perception of what was 
likely to prove helpful to the needs of the country than 
the Conklings and Curtises of New York, and when we look 
back and see how near we came, thirty years before the 
opening of the Panama Canal, to losing, through dullness 
of comprehension, the Sandwich Islands, the key to the 
Pacific, we can appreciate the risks we ran in the defeat of 
Blaine. In a more narrow and personal point of view, in 
his defeat the "Half Breeds" lost the chance of control of 
the party as they had before through the assassination 
of Garfield. 

Without knowing who was the author of the address, 
the Inquirer said that it was ''admirable in tone and con- 
clusive in argument;" the Bulletin said that it "showed 
much clearness and ability;" the Times said that it was 
"one of the most important documents that had been con- 
tributed to the campaign;" the New York Times said that 
"they make a very clever use of the reputation they got," 
and the Springfield Republican, ever sneering, supercilious 
and mistaken, said that "it gauges the profundity of the 
Pennsylvania mind." 

The address commented upon over the country and pro- 
ducing an effect in an important national contest is here 
inserted : 

July 11, 1884. 

The undersigned Republicans of Pennsylvania, reljdng for 
the proof of the earnestness of their convictions upon acts of 
independence, which in 1881 and in 1882 received the support 
of 50,000 voters, venture to present some considerations to those 
Republicians of other states who may be in doubt as to their 
duty with reference to the nominations made by the National 
Convention. 
188 



REFORMER 

In order that the views of those who advocate the right of 
separate and independent poUtical action should have weight 
with their fellowmen, it is important that this right should only 
be invoked in cases of well-ascertained necessity. They who take 
an interest in watching the political fold become wearied with the 
cry of "wolf," if it be uttered Hghtly or with too much frequency. 
The greatest wrong of which the Independents have had in the 
past to complain has been the use of the party machinery in such 
a way as to thwart the wishes of the people. Time and again has 
the pubUc preference been set aside by men who were able to 
manipulate conventions and to utihze the various devices known 
to the skilled pohtician. The Independents of Pennsylvania have 
felt that they could justify their action in opposing a nomination 
even for so high an office as that of Governor of the State, if able 
to show plainly that it was the outcome of the schemes of the 
few, successful at the expense of the many. To a great extent this 
wrong has been remedied, and very largely through their exertions. 
By the overthrow of the unit rule and the establishment of district 
representation, it became possible to hold a National Convention 
that was representative in the true sense. The expression of the 
will of the members of the RepubUcan party, and they were enabled 
to express their will because of the exertions of the Independents, 
has resulted in the nomination of Mr. Blaine. 

It cannot be gamsaid that Mr. Blaine is the choice of the 
masses of the dominant party in the United States, and that 
the late convention, better than most of its predecessors, gave 
heed to the demands of its constitutents. It is an evidence of 
the personal strength of Mr. Blaine that his support came from the 
farthest East and the farthest West, from Iowa, with her agricul- 
turists, and from Pennsylvania, with her manufacturers — and in 
these widely separated localities, with their diverse interests, was 
exceptionally earnest and enthusiastic. To oppose his election 
would then seem to be an attack upon the results of independent 
work. It would seem to be an acceptance of the theory against 
which we have been contending, that the few are more entitled to 
consideration than the many, and to differ from the principle and 
practice of the machine men, mainly in respect to the personaUty 
of the individuals who participate in the effort. It assumes a 
very assailable, if not an indefensible position in that it enables 
opponents to charge that Independents are never cortent unless 
their own preferences as to candidates have been successful. Such 
an opposition would not only be difficult to defend upon theory 
but would, we conceive, be most disastrous in its results, since 

189 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

it involves the proposition of surrendering the control of the 
country to the Democracy, a party which has been on the wrong 
side of every important question settled in the most eventful 
period of American history, and which has to look back to the time 
of Jackson for its achievements, to the time of Jefferson for its 
virtues. The annals of human affairs show no instance of reformers 
relying for support of their measures upon an organization which 
has exhibited such extreme conservatism. 

Even if it be true that Mr. Blaine has not been a pronounced 
advocate of "Civil Service Reform," that cause has, in our judg- 
ment, far more to hope from the Repubhcan party, which has 
embodied the principle in its platform, than from the Democrats, 
who are avowedly hostile to it, who dismissed to private Ufe its 
Democratic sponsor in the senate, and who are eagerly awaiting a 
distribution of partisan rewards. We believe, further, that it 
would be more reasonable to expect support for this measure from 
a man with the vigor and intelHgence of Mr. Blaine, than from any 
nominee of the Democrats, who, if he should be elected and 
make an effort in its favor, would have the whole strength of his 
party used against him. 

Nor would such an opposition be justified by the fact that 
charges are made against Mr. Blaine which those who make them 
say affect his personal integrity. That he must be defended, 
may, perhaps, be a good argument against a nomination, but it 
certainly has no relevancy at this time. If it should be once 
estabhshed that a man ought not to be elected to the presidency 
because accusations have been made against him, the ablest men 
would be always excluded. In the heat of contests these accusa- 
tions spring up and luxuriate. They are like the parasitic plants 
that cover an oak, but Kve on air and need no roots. It should not 
be forgotten that these charges have been met by the State of 
Maine, which has since elected him to the Senate; by Garfield, who 
made him Secretary of State, and by the great party which has 
chosen him for the presidency. Every presumption is in favor of 
a man who has been so trusted, and to have weight, it is not 
enough that such charges should be made, they must be con- 
clusively proven. 

If the "Jingoism" of Mr. Blaine means no more than is asserted 
in the Pall Mall Gazette, which says: "But wherever he can he will 
oust us from the position we hold; wherever an opportunity offers 
he will use it to the uttermost to replace our influence and our 
trade by the influence and trade of the United States, and he will 
regard it as his chief object to promote a great American Con- 
190 



REFORMER 

federacy under the aegis of the Government at Washington, 
which would tend to increase the export trade of the United States 
at the expense of Great Britain," that epithet, borrowed from 
English politics, will have no terrors for an American. 

To him who says that he cannot support Mr. Blaine because 
of conscience, there is nothing to be answered since he stands 
upon a ground beyond the reach of argument. He assumes, 
however, a great responsibility, and we ask him to take good heed 
as {o his steps. We suggest to him that there may be a merit in 
the self-discipline which permits the people to have their own way, 
because even if our lives be cleaner and our judgments better than 
theirs, there is still a possibility that our information is incorrect 
or our conclusions from it erroneous. We appeal to him, if he live 
in Massachusetts, not to mistake for conscience the resentment he 
may feel for sharp words spoken years ago and which broadminded 
men have forgotten, and if he live in New York that he see to it 
that his conscience does not conceal his approval of certain 
English views upon the subject of political economy. We in 
Pennsylvania see no reason to strike at so distinguished and able 
a Republican. We perceive no merit and no wisdom in hurrying 
into an alliance which necessarily includes the most corrupt 
element in American poUtics. We decline to form a league with 
men who always opposed the measures we held to be of the most 
importance, who now reject the reforms which we regard as 
essential, and who still cling to those means of stifling minorities 
which Republicans have discarded as unworthy. We feel that 
whether or not Mr. Blaine was our choice for the nomination, his 
election will best serve the interests of the people and that to defeat 
him would be to aid in the restoration of "machine" methods, and 
to entrust with general power a party which has given every 
evidence of inability to exercise it in such a way as to promote 
the common welfare." 

In 1885 I was appointed by the Board of Judges a mem- 
ber of the Board of Public Education for the City of Phila- 
delphia, representing the Twenty-ninth ward. The 
appointment was due to the intervention of Judge David 
Newlin Fell, who then and ever since has been a close and 
helpful friend. Edward T. Steel, a successful Market Street 
merchant and one of my associates in the effort to improve 
political conditions, was the president of the board. He 

191 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

ad recently brought on from the West, and made super- 
ntendent of the schools, James MacAlister, a small, thin, 
homely and intelligent Scotchman, who was in the midst of 
a struggle to introduce certain important changes, possibly 
improvements, in both methods and curriculum. Encounter- 
ing many difficulties and obstacles, accompanied with some 
criticism, as all men do who take hold of the problems of life 
with earnestness, he a few years later withdrew to take 
charge of the Drexel Institute. Alongside of Steel and 
MacAUster stood James Pollock, born in County Tyrone, 
Ireland, and the owner of a carpet mill in Kensington, and 
shares in banks and trust companies, short in stature, natty 
in appearance and scrupulously clean, with hair closely 
curled and parted in the middle. The first impression is 
that of a dandy; after meeting him, however, you soon 
discovered that you are up against a proposition. You 
probably conclude ere long that you never discovered more 
"sand" to the square inch of surface. He has developed 
into a hon vivant, and no one is better known at the dinners 
of the Five o'Clock and Clover clubs. His speeches are 
witty to the point of acridity, and many a man of extended 
fame has gone down before him in confusion. Set over 
against these idealists were a number of members who 
believed in the multiplication table and the alphabet and in 
learning to spell by putting letters together, who had faith 
in things as they were and had been when they, as children, 
went to school. Their leader was Simon Gratz, of a Jewish 
family long established in Philadelphia, slight in physique 
even to emaciation, and one of the cleverest and most astute 
of men. He had had long experience in this work and knew 
its details and the legislation affecting it better than any 
other person connected with it. Indefatigable, inexorable, 
intelligent and suave, there were few who cared to enter 
into controversies with him. He was likewise one of the 
Board of Revision of Taxes and, therefore, brought into 
relations with the judges, a member of the council of the 
192 



REFORMER 

Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and he has one of the 
most important collections of autographs in the country, 
which only a very few selected persons have ever been 
permitted to see. 

The board was an arena for orators, among whom were 
Richardson L. Wright and John L. Kinsey, the latter of 
whom has since become a Judge of the Court of Conomon 
Pleas No. 1. Wright, a good-hearted and worthy egotist 
and an old war-horse of Democracy, had in his earlier days 
been speaker of the House of Representatives at Harrisburg. 
In build, contour of face, dress, manner and emotional style 
of declamation, he was a counterpart of Henry Clay, and 
he talked by the hour upon every question that arose. 
Nevertheless, all gave him respect because he was both 
honest and manly. It was told of him that once when the 
omnibuses still carried passengers through the town, he 
came upon a woman loaded with bundles trying to clamber 
up the steps in the rear of the coach. With admirable 
kindness and redundant courtesy he gave her his assistance, 
and then in departing said: ''And now. Madam, when you 
reach the bosom of your family, you will be able to tell them 
that you have been helped on your way by the Honorable 
Speaker of the House of Representatives." 

Being a persona grata, I was appointed a member of both 
the most important committees, those upon the High School 
and Normal School, a distinction accorded to no one else, 
and was made chairman of the Committee on Supplies, a 
place of great responsibility, since that committee purchased 
all of the text-books, utensils, etc., and expended annually 
large sums of money. During my service I had built the 
Robert Morris Schoolhouse and decent out-houses for every 
school in the ward. 



193 



CHAPTER VIII 
Judge 

THROUGHOUT my professional career I had a 
vague sense that some time or other, after I had 
acquired suJEcient legal information, I should 
like to go upon the bench. I yielded to the inclina- 
tion, however, with great timidity. It impressed me as 
being a very exalted station and that to him w^ho held it 
were due respect and reverence. Therefore, no man ought 
to be willing to accept such advancement unless well assured 
of his own learning, character and fitness. No other cause 
has done so much to lower the tone of public service in 
the United States as the bad habit of regarding those who 
hold public office with suspicion and treating them with 
abuse. We began with the magistrates and aldermen, 
and after destroying their usefulness, the same destructive 
methods were slowly extended until they reached the 
presidency. Better sense and a truer philosophy would 
teach that if the greatest efficiency is ever to be secured 
it must be by the proper recognition of that which is done 
well rather than by the condemnation of that which is 
done ill. Every constable ought to be regarded with the 
respect due to one who wields to some extent the authority 
of the state. Display of disrespect is, after all, the out- 
come of a weak vanity and the evidence of imperfect intelli- 
gence. Down to this time the courts remained the one 
institution in the land which had not been assailed and 
were treated with a consideration helpful to them in the 
performance of their duties. 

One time, when a vacancy had occurred in one of the 
courts of common pleas, I met Mayer Sulzberger, who 
194 



JUDGE 

was handling a large practice with great ability and rapidly 
coming to the front at the bar, and he said to me: 

"Why do you not make an effort for that vacancy? 
The bench would suit your tastes and you are just the 
man fitted for it." 

I made no effort then, but the suggestion bore fruit. 
A. Wilson Norris, with whom I had become acquainted 
in the Grand Army, who had become State Reporter and 
Auditor General, who had been instrumental in securing 
the appointment of Fell to the bench and who had come 
to me professionally in an important matter concerning 
the interests of his brother, a physician, had an office in 
association with Samuel Gustine Thompson. I broached 
the subject to him. Said he: 

"I will talk to Quay and see what he thinks." 

Some time later he reported that Quay said, "It suits 
me." 

Up to this time I had only met Mr. Quay once or twice 
in my life, and then in the most casual way. But there 
were these ties between us — Major Patrick Anderson, 
of the Revolutionary Army, had three wives. By the 
second he had a son, Isaac, who was my great-grandfather. 
By the third he had a daughter, who was Quay's grand- 
mother. Joseph Quay was unthrifty and died, leaving 
his wife penniless and with a family of small children. 
In those days the dependent were not sent to homes and 
hospitals, and the obligations which come with relation- 
ship were recognized as duties to be performed, and one 
of the orphans was taken into the home of my Grand- 
father Pennypacker to be raised. I have always felt assured 
that the interest Quay took in my welfare and the warmth 
of feeling he displayed toward me was due, not to the 
relationship, which was too remote to affect conduct, but 
to the act of kindness on the part of my grandfather. It 
is creditable to him that he did not forget and that he 
should endeavor to repay. All of my public conduct had 

195 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

been in opposition to what he had been trying to accom- 
plish until Cameron gave him notice of the substitution 
of Christopher Magee, and Quay, accepting the situation, 
ran for the office of State Treasurer, depending upon his 
own strength and popularity, and succeeded. Regarding 
this effort as a manifestation of just what was needed in 
the state, I did what I could to help him. The death of 
Judge William S. Peirce created a vacancy in No. 1 Court. 
F. Amedee Bregy, an assistant district attorney, with 
George S. Graham, had, with the assistance of this gentle- 
man, been a candidate two or three times and an agreement 
had been reached that his ambition should be gratified 
upon the next occasion. With each day his appointment 
was expected. Then something occurred. Quay went to 
Harrisburg and saw Governor James A. Beaver. A week 
or two went by and then it began to be whispered about 
that the appointment would come to me. April 19, 1887, 
I received a telegram from Norris asking me to see Quay 
at the Continental Hotel at eight o'clock that evening. 
I was there at the time, curious and expectant. Quay 
said to me : 

''The Governor has concluded to appoint Bregy." 
I replied: "Some friends of mine had arranged to go to 
Harrisburg tonight by the eleven o'clock train to wrestle 
with him. I will stop them at once." 
"Let them go, if you think it better." 
"No, you have done all that can be done." 
He had expected a protest or an expression of dis- 
appointment. There was a twinkle in his eye and I was 
sure that he was pleased with my way of meeting the 
situation. 

A year later occurred a vacancy in the Supreme Court. 
At this time James Tyndale Mitchell sat in Court of Common 
Pleas No. 2. This court had been the successor of the 
old district court, had inherited the traditions of Shars- 
wood and has ever maintained a high rank among the 
196 



JUDGE 

courts of Philadelphia. Mitchell was an able lawyer and 
an excellent judge, being well grounded in the principles 
of the law and having the intellectual capacity which 
enabled him to make the application of them. At the 
same time he had earnest convictions and strong predi- 
lections which sometimes amounted to prejudices, and 
I have felt that he had too little human sympathy to make 
him altogether safe in the handling of cases where men 
were charged with crime, especially murder. His most 
intimate friends were David Sellers, counsel for the Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad Company, and Simon Gratz. Fate inter- 
wove our careers, but never brought the men themselves 
very close together. I was in the convention which first 
gave him the nomination. Ten years later, when another 
election approached, he once, to my surprise, appointed 
me a master in divorce. I attended to the duties, but the 
parties were too poor to pay me a fee. We were partners 
in the ownership of the Weekly Notes of Cases. He was 
president of the council of the Historical Society of Pennsyl- 
vania when I was president of the society. We were both 
vice--provosts of the Law Academy. He was Chief Justice 
while I was Governor of the Commonwealth. 

Mitchell was anxious to go to the Supreme Court, 
but he had little political support in the city and none 
whatever in the state. Quay said to me : 

"I care nothing whatever for Mitchell, but I want to 
make a place for you on the bench," and when the State 
Convention met, Mitchell received the nomination. After 
his election it grated upon him a little to feel that his high 
office had come to him rather in the way of a benefit con- 
ferred than as a recognition of superior attainments. Two 
men were suggested for the vacancy in Court No. 2 — 
P. F. Rothermel, Jr., son of the artist who painted the 
^'Battle of Gettysburg," a lawyer in every way capable, 
and myself. Among those who wrote to the Governor 
urging my appointment were: William Henry Rawle, 

197 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Richard C. McMurtrie, John G. Johnson, former Governor 
Henry M. Hoyt, George L. Crawford, Morton P. Henry, 
George Tucker Bispham, James W. Paul, W. Brooke 
Rawle, Joseph C. Fraley, Richard M. Cadwalader, Hamp- 
ton L. Carson, Charles Chauncey Binney, E. Hunn Hanson, 
Henry Flanders, John B. Gest and substantially all of the 
strongest men at the Bar. In the court itself. Fell wanted 
me. Mitchell would have been pleased to see Rothermel 
take his place and Hare had no preference. The Governor 
asked them conMentially for their views, and Mitchell 
was deputed to give it expression. In a long letter, now 
in my possession, this is what he wrote : 

"Mr. Rothermel has the greater strength, both with 
the city leaders and with the bar, especially with the 
active practicing bar. Mr. Pennypacker, however, has 
some strong friends among the bar and, as you already 
know, has the backing of Senator Quay." 

Those who gave their support to Mr. Rothermel were 
George S. Graham, A. S. L. Shields, M. Hampton Todd, 
Wilham B. Mann, James H. Shakespeare, Dimner Beeber 
and Alexander Simpson, Jr. 

The Adjutant General, Daniel H. Hastings, telegraphed 
to me January 8, 1889, that I would be appointed the next 
day. His prophesy was based upon information. 

I came to the work with many misgivings. Though 
as a student I had read widely, and though I had labored 
through the English Common Law Reports in the prepara- 
tion of my digest, through forty-five volumes of the Weekly 
Notes of Cases and the four volumes of my own reports 
and had so received, perhaps, the most useful training, 
I feared that every once in a while some question would 
suddenly arise about which I knew nothing and that I 
should sit there undecided, not knowing which way to go. 
In fourteen years that situation never arose and no problem 
ever came before me, no matter how important, intricate 
or involved, about which, whether rightly or wrongly, 
198 



JUDGE 

I did not have a positive opinion as to how it ought to be 
decided. I had heard that Joseph T. Pratt, an unprepared 
judge, who died early, before sitting in jury trials sent 
for the papers and studied the cases. This course occurred 
to me, but upon the advice of Fell, I never resorted to it 
and very seldom saw the pleadings. Nor was it my method 
in the trial of causes to attempt to recall to memory earlier 
decisions. The judge who remembers that the case before 
him was decided at such a time and in such a report is 
mentally traveling by rote and is sure to be lost in the 
mazes. No two cases are ever exactly alike and his task 
is, depending upon principles with which he is familiar, 
to apply them accurately to the facts which come up before 
him. As in all reasoning, the most important part of the 
process is properly to analyze the facts. Then the classi- 
fication naturally follows. 

John I. Clark Hare presided over the court. It was a 
privilege to sit on the bench with him and it was my good 
fortune to have been thrown into a court where the asso- 
ciations were the most desirable and the most likely to 
prove stimulating. He was a gentleman. Then, nearing 
the decline of life, he had an experience which began in 
young manhood. His works upon contracts and upon the 
constitution had given him national and international 
reputation, and no jurist in the country was more widely 
and favorably known. He was spare in frame, ready in 
tongue and lovable in disposition. His methods were 
disorderly. He would grow interested in the arguments, 
pile up the paper books to the right and left of him, suddenly 
leave the court on some impulse, and never think of them 
again unless his attention was called to them. On one 
occasion he threw his quarterly warrant for $1,750 into 
the waste paper basket, where it was later found by one 
of the tipstaves. This want of orderly arrangement 
extended to his mental processes. In stating a proposition, 
all of the qualifications occurred to him and no man was 

199 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

more familiar with them than he. His voice was weak. 
When he charged a jury their effort to hear and to untwist 
his involved sentences left them in a state of utter despair. 
As a nisi prius judge, he cannot, therefore, be regarded 
as an entire success. Fell has at times said that if we could 
have kept him on tap in a back room ready to be called 
upon in special emergencies and have done the work our- 
selves, it would have produced better results. Along with 
him sat Fell. He was a Quaker who, before going on to 
the bench by appointment of Governor Hartranft, had 
been in the war and had built up a large practice. He 
was the incarnation of good common sense. Nobody 
could be more helpful. He had a knack of getting the 
things of life, not for himself alone but for those in whom 
he was interested. Nobody knew better the effect upon 
an earnest advocate of the Socratian statement, "Per- 
haps I was wrong." He has been deservedly successful in 
all directions, living a smooth and even life, gathering 
friends, money and repute and is now the chief justice. 
He came from Bucks County, prohfic in the production of 
judges. 

When I entered the court, the run of business was such 
as to give me the term in the quarter sessions. I hesitated 
to begin in that way. In my practice I had made the com- 
mon mistake of civil lawyers of not going into that court, 
not so much because of the feeling that it was unworthy 
practice as because of the fear that through some lack of 
skill on my part an innocent man might be deprived of 
life or liberty. The fear was for the most part unnecessary. 
Only in those cases affected by public clamor is there much 
danger of the punishment of innocence. As a general 
thing, when men begin a career of crime their first offenses 
are overlooked and forgiven. It is only when they have 
been repeated often enough to wear out the patience of 
those injured that accusations are apt to be made and 
arrests to follow. Magistrates, grand juries, petit juries 
200 



JUDGE 

and judges are all more or less sympathetic and after all 
of the sifting process the residuum is unlikely to include 
much innocence. 

Fell kindly exchanged courts with me. I began in the 
common pleas, and one of my earliest cases was an involved 
land damage suit against the Philadelphia and Reading 
Railway Company for land taken for track purposes in 
Manayunk, in which so good a lawyer as William White 
Wiltbank was counsel. In one of my early cases I rather 
astonished the lawyers present by entering a non-suit in 
a case represented by such eminent counsel as John C. 
Bullitt, who himself seldom came into court. 

I was qualified as a judge January 12, 1889, and, there- 
fore, the people had ten months in which to grow accustomed 
to seeing me on the bench before the election in November. 
At that time Edwin H. Fitler was mayor of the city, and 
under the Bullitt bill had great power. 

"You had better call on him," said Quay to me. "Do 
you know him?" 

"I never met him in my life." 

Quay waited an instant, smiled and turned to me with 
only these words : 

"His head is quite large." 

This is a characteristic illustration of the ways of the 
Senator. He did not read to me a dissertation upon the 
effect of flattery upon some classes of minds. He simply 
gave me a hint. An illustration of another sort is contained 
in a letter about a president written to William Linn, 
May 7, 1892: 

"In reply to your inquiry as to whether or not the 
Republican State League should endorse Harrison, I would 
say 'No'." 

At the time of the Bregy appointment McManes had 
been decided in his opposition to me because of my partici- 
pation in independent movements and my course in the 
board of education. But he was a warm friend of Simon 

201 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Gratz, who was close to Mitchell, and he became much 
enlisted in the effort to advance Mitchell. This was the 
leverage with which Quay brought him around to my 
support. I have been told that once when McManes 
asked Quay to suggest that I do something which he thought 
would be helpful to his political plans, Quay replied : 

"McManes, Pennypacker is one of those literary fellows 
and you know they cannot be depended upon for anything 
of that sort." 

In other words. Quay was using his influence to protect 
me from any attempt at a pressure which he knew would 
be harmful. Late in the year before, a struggle arose in 
the board of education over the election of president in 
which I had taken a decided part in favor of Samuel B. 
Huey. The candidate of Gratz was Isaac A. Sheppard, 
who was finally successful. Quay wrote to me that I had 
better resign from the board and thus get out of the con- 
troversy. I presume that this suggestion came from 
McManes. I replied that I was so far committed that 
I could not retreat without a display of weakness, and 
that, besides, it would present the appearance of announcing 
my appointment to the bench and I was disposed to assume 
all of the risks which might be involved. I heard no more 
of it, remained on the board and voted for Huey. 

It was reported over the town that Disston and some 
of the other leaders would make a contest in the Republican 
Convention, but this purpose, if it ever existed, was soon 
dissipated and I was nominated by unanimous consent. 
At this time William F. Harrity, who had read law with 
Cassidy and afterward managed a presidential campaign, 
became a financier and acquired a fortune, always a friend 
of mine, was the strongest among the Democratic leaders. 
I received the Democratic endorsement and almost all 
of the votes that were cast in the city. 

The course of my life for the next ten years was now 
determined. The vicissitudes of existence, however, are 
202 



JUDGE 

very many and an event which happened September 3d 
nearly interrupted the current. In 1883 I bought for my 
mother, who had about a hundred thousand dollars, inherited 
from her father, Moore Hall, a property of 105 acres in 
Chester County, near Phcenixville. It is one of the famous 
colonial places of the state, having been owned by William 
Moore, a colonel in the French and Indian War and President 
Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Chester County 
for forty years. He is buried under the front step of St. 
David's Church, at Radnor. I managed the property 
for my mother and each summer we spent three months 
there. After dark on the evening mentioned, I was driving 
toward home in an open wagon with two seats, on the 
rear of which sat James Sommers, a faithful and ugly old 
Irishman with a hare lip. From Nutt's road, another road 
runs at right angles, to the house. As we approached 
this sharp corner a wagon came rapidly up behind us, my 
horse made a sudden plunge around the comer and threw 
both James and myself out in the road. I lay with my 
feet caught and my head on the ground between the wheels 
of the wagon, but holding fast to the lines succeeded in 
stopping the horse with the hind wheel against my neck, 
while James, in distress, was crying out, ''The Judge is 
kilt." 

The Press said, editorially, April 15, 1889, that an 
eminent criminal lawyer announced "that he had heard 
at least twenty members of the bar declare that the quick- 
ness with which Judge Pennypacker grasped the points 
of a case and the clearness of his charges had not been 
excelled in the Philadelphia Courts." 

Quay, pleased with his venture, wrote to me October 
25th: "If I told you all the good things I heard said of 
you by Democrats and Republicans this week in Phila- 
delphia you would blush to the point of apoplexy." 

George Tucker Bispham, whose book upon Equity is 
everywhere accepted as a text, said, in the nominating 

203 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

convention: "He is learned. He is patient. He is firm 
when firmness is required. He is lenient when justice can 
properly be tempered by mercy. He is always a gentleman." 

During the month before the election the Clover Club 
gave a dinner at which I was one of the invited guests. 
As it happened, a French fleet under the command of 
Admiral de Coulston was lying in the Delaware River, 
and the officers, including the Admiral, were present at 
the dinner. In the midst of the festivities Moses P. Handy, 
a newspaper editor, who was presiding, arose and said: 
"We have a member of the judiciary present who will 
now address you in his native vernacular, the Pennsylvania 
Dutch," and he called upon me. I could not have uttered 
ten words in Pennsylvania Dutch, with which I had not 
the slightest familiarity, but in French I presented greetings 
to the Admiral and told how Lafayette had come to us in 
the Revolutionary War, and how we had won our inde- 
pendence through the assistance of France. It was not 
much of a speech, but these roysterers were unable to 
guy it and it furnished a text for the campaign orators 
who were able to say "So there!" 

About the same time Mary Pennypacker Colket made 
me, together with John R. Read, who, under Cleveland, 
was the United States District Attorney, her executor. 
She was the widow of Coffin Colket, who had been president 
of the Philadelphia and Norristown Railroad and had left 
an estate of about two million of dollars. He was swarthy, 
homely to ugliness, plain in all of his ways and very much 
of a man. In his youth he and John O. Stearns were 
employed in some minor capacity in the construction of 
the Chester Valley Railroad and for a time boarded with 
William Walker — "Uncle Billy" as we called him — whose 
wife was a sister of my Grandfather Penn>"packer. Each 
of them married a daughter of the household. My grand- 
father, with the stability and associations of a prosperous 
Chester County farmer, commented: "I do not under- 
204 



JUDGE 

stand why William Walker permits his daughters to marry 
those wandering railroad men." They both became wealthy 
and Stearns reached the presidency of the New Jersey 
Central Railroad. Colket once told me this tale of Franklin 
B. Gowen, the wonderfully able lawyer who prosecuted 
the "Molly Maguires" to conviction, who devised the 
policy as president of the corporation which has since made 
the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company so 
prosperous, and who afterward shot himself in Washington : 

*'He was the quickest man to make a bargain ever I 
knew; one day I went to see him at the office of the com- 
pany about some business. After it had been transacted 
he accompanied me to my carriage, which stood at the 
curb, and as I opened the door, he said : ' By the bye, Colket, 

what will you take for the tract?' naming a tract of 

coal lands I owned. 'I want for it a million one hundred 
and fifty thousand dollars,' was my reply. 'All right,' 
said Gowen, *I will take it.' The quickest man to make 
a bargain ever I met," he concluded with an air which 
suggested that perhaps after all he might have secured 
more for the tract. 

Judge F. Carroll Brewster gave a dinner to George S. 
Graham and myself, attended mainly by lawyers. The 
Penn Club, in whose organization I had participated, gave 
me a reception, and the students from the office of Peter 
McCall, then at the bar, gave me a dinner of recognition 
which was much appreciated. 

After the lapse of a year John G. Johnson wrote in a 
published article: ''The opinions he has delivered have 
been what those who knew him expected — learned, scholarly 
and logical ... As a nisi prius judge, he has surprised 
his friends, by a display of unusually quick comprehension, 
sound judgment and practical common sense." 

The court held its sessions in Congress Hall, at the 
southeast corner of Sixth and Chestnut streets, and the 
judges sat upon the same platform on which Washington 

205 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

stood when inaugurated President of the United States. 
The old blue ornamentation of the ceiling, studded with 
stars, had recently, with the worst of judgment, been ruined 
by the insertion of glass knobs for lights. Ere long, I was 
called upon to preside over the court of quarter sessions 
which sat in the west room on the first floor, which for 
nearly ten years had been the meeting place of the House 
of Representatives of the United States. There Lyon and 
Griswold, two New England congressmen, in 1798, had 
spat in each other's faces and beaten each other with clubs 
and pokers, and later Probst had been tried for murder. 
After the coiu-t had been opened upon my first day, the 
case of a man charged with larceny was called and he was 
convicted. I imposed an imprisonment of eight months 
in the county prison and a fine of ten dollars. Then one 
of the court officers came up to me and quietly whispered: 
''Judge, the other older judges never impose fines in 
these cases." 

"Do they not?" I said, ''then they fail in their duty." 
I had remembered that the statute made the sentence 
obligatory and gave no discretion to the judges. All 
through my service as a judge these fines were imposed 
for such crimes, although it very seldom happened that 
they could be collected and the practice caused consider- 
able trouble to the prison authorities. The plunge had 
been taken, the court officers never again ventured critical 
suggestions, and no serious trouble ever arose in the deter- 
mination of the causes. The life of a judge is a reversal 
of the Canterbury pilgrimages. He sits still while the 
world, with its burden of interests and hopes, woes and 
emotions, passes in review before him, and he sees the 
strifes of the mart, the scandals of the alleys and the skeletons 
of the closets in all of their phases. It is not, however, 
as broad a field as it otherwise would be because both 
bench and bar, together with the growth of legal learning, 
have followed the bent of certain narrow developments of 
206 



JUDGE 

modern life. Its most complicated and involved processes 
of ratiocination and its most elaborately established prin- 
ciples concern the acquisition, ownership and transfer of 
property, and they are, therefore, of comparatively minor 
importance. In the long run it is of little moment which 
of two men secures the moneys in dispute. He who wins 
may be the worse off because he has won and he who loses 
has suffered no irreparable harm. The treasures of the 
earth are still within his reach. A man may exert as high 
an intellectuality and as much mental acumen in playing 
a game of chess as Napoleon did in planning the battle of 
Austerlitz, but when it is over he has only played a game. 
The Knights Templar are well dressed, carry short swords, 
and march with accuracy, but the swords never cut and 
the steps lead nowhere. Decisions of questions involving 
the rights of property require much learning and skill and 
have their uses, but their effect upon humanity is neither 
very deep nor very permanent. I have known judges 
who, sitting in the quarter sessions and regarding the 
work as of little consequence, would tell the district attorney 
to proceed with the trials and they themselves retire into 
their chambers. I have known others who looked upon 
the betrayal of a woman as a mere peccadillo, and the 
stealing of money as the most heinous of offenses. All 
of these judges were mistaken. The most important ques- 
tions which arise in the courts are those which concern 
personal liberty. The worst of crimes are those which 
involve brutality to man and beast, and the abuse of women 
and children. 

It is a satisfaction to me to remember that during the 
fourteen years I sat on the bench no man was ever tried 
for a crime before me, even the least serious, without my 
having analyzed the evidence on both sides, and no man 
was ever convicted and punished unless that evidence 
convinced me that he had committed the offense. The 
most difficult matters to determine with any assurance 

207 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

of accuracy were those which arose in the desertion court 
over the quarrels between husbands and wives, and the 
maintenance of wives and children. The facts occurring 
in the privacy of home were always more or less obscure 
and difficult of proof. The history of the trials, imposi- 
tions and failures which lead up to the catastrophe is often 
remote and seldom disclosed. In civil causes concerning 
the ownership of goods, the problems are carefully pre- 
sented by counsel, and the court has the benefit of learning 
what other judges have thought in like matters. But the 
desertion cases were hurried through on Friday afternoons 
upon a list of perhaps a hundred, by Samuel E. Cavin, 
then counsel for the Guardians of The Poor, a man entirely 
capable and with a desire to do right, but deaf as a post 
and, therefore, unable to grasp the tale told by the witnesses. 

I reached certain conclusions with regard to the admin- 
istration of justice. Some of them may appear to be 
radical, but, being the outcome of experience, it may be 
that their presentation here may lead to thought resulting 
at some future time in useful modification of present 
methods. 

1. There are entirely too many technical crimes and 
too much creation of crime by legislation. Every man 
who has some ends to serve and has sufficient influence 
goes to the assembly and gets the failure to do what he 
wants to have done enacted into a crime. To spit in a 
street car is an act of nastiness, to put catsup in a branded 
bottle is perhaps an infringement of right, to assist an 
ignorant man at the polls to perfect his ballot may affect 
the result of the election, the failure to pay customs duties 
to the Government may cause it inconvenience, but none 
of these constitutes a crime. To call them so only leads 
to confusion of thought and remissness of conduct. These 
examples represent a long category so extended that no 
citizen can ever be sure that in what he does he is not 
offending against some criminal statute. 
208 



JUDGE 

2. I very much doubt the efficacy of the effort to pre- 
vent wrongdoing or to elevate the standards of Hfe by 
punishment. I have scrutinized the faces of men in the 
dock, observed their conduct and hstened to their stories, 
endeavoring to see whether I could find any line with 
which to separate them from those outside, and always 
in vain. Men are as they are born and as the hammering 
of life leaves them. Most of the misconduct comes from 
the incapacity to think accurately and properly to foresee 
consequences. I am satisfied that most men do the best 
that they are able to do with their characters and the cir- 
cumstances which confront them. Since the beginning 
of the historic period, some eight thousand years ago, the 
annals of mankind have been filled with the records of 
attempts to prevent by the infliction of punishment certain 
lines of conduct considered at the time objectionable, but 
often recognized at later periods to have been conducive 
to the advancement of the race. Experience has shown 
these attempts ever to have been futile. All kinds of 
punishment have been tried — changing, beheading, burning, 
mutilating, disemboweling, quartering, gouging out the 
eyes, cutting out the tongue, cropping the ears, branding, 
standing in the stocks, drowning, using the rack and the 
thumbscrew and many others which ingenuity in this 
direction could devise. Strange as it may seem, the effect 
always seems to be to increase the numbers of offenses. 
Violence begets violence. The burning of negroes in the 
South has immeasurably increased the cases of special 
crime it was intended to prevent. In Jamaica, where no 
such spectacles occur, this particular crime is almost 
unknown. In modern life old forms of punishment have 
been abandoned, except that of death for murder and 
incarceration for other offenses. The former is an anach- 
ronism and will soon have disappeared. It must be 
plain to any philosophical observer that the latter is slowly 
giving way. A prison is now conducted like a home. The 
14 209 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

food is plentiful and nutritious. The sentence is shortened 
for good behavior. I have frequently had convicts ask 
me to give them a longer term and transfer them from 
the county prison to the Eastern Penitentary because in 
the latter institution they could get tobacco. "Tickets 
of leave" are now granted which permit prisoners to be 
out on parole. All of which shows that the old idea of 
hammering men and putting walls around them to make 
them better is being gradually ameliorated. In our day 
the punishment of wives and the whipping of children 
at home and in schools have been abandoned, and I am 
quite sure that the day is not far distant when it will be 
recognized that the punishment of men serves no good 
purpose. This is of course a different proposition from 
the suggestion of the abandonment of the use of force to 
protect person or property or to prevent the commissions 
of crime. If I shoot a burglar who insists upon coming 
into my room in the night, I act upon an entirely different 
principle. 

3. The general opinion appears to be that since the 
social evil has always heretofore existed it is likely to con- 
tinue for all future time. The same kind of reasoning 
might once have been applied to royalty, slavery, priest- 
craft and other institutions which have lost their hold 
upon the world, after being long retained. Personally, 
I look aghast upon the complacency with which we permit 
the destruction of women for the mere wanton gratification 
of the passions of men and if we gave a tithe of the thought 
to the subject that we do to the acquisition of property, 
the evil would soon be eradicated. Its existence, of course, 
proves that there is some law of nature which society, 
as now constituted, violates habitually, just as surely 
as the corn on the foot, which is an abnormal growth of 
the processes of life, points to the pressure of the boot. 
If the cause can be found the results can be prevented. 
It is easily discovered. There is nothing inherently wrong 
210 



JUDGE 

in the sexual relation and, on the contrary, it ought to be 
encouraged. It is accompanied, however, with certain 
important duties which concern society as well as the 
individuals themselves. The woman ought to suckle and 
care for the young and the man ought to provide for her 
necessities and those of the children he begets. The cause 
of prostitution is the effort of the male to enjoy the inter- 
course and at the same time to escape the responsibilities 
which accompany the relation. The male is the stronger 
in will and muscle and it is he who persuades the female. 
Let him be made to understand that he may call the woman 
to him if he chooses, but that when he takes this step he 
accepts certain obligations from which he need not hope 
to escape. The thought of society and present legislation 
put the burden upon the female. It ought to be put upon 
the male. The sending of police to make raids upon what 
are designated as ''haunts of vice" are spectacular absurd- 
ities which do much injustice and no good whatever. Let 
a law be passed to the effect that whenever an unmarried 
man and an unmarried woman by mutual consent have 
sexual intercourse they establish a permanent relation 
with mutual duties, one of which is the support thereafter 
of the woman and her offspring by the man. Let either 
of the parties have the right to enforce the continuance 
of the relation and the fulfilment of the duties by a decree 
of court as in other cases. It may be called marriage, 
morganatic marriage, legislative marriage or any other 
term regarded as appropriate. Under such legislation 
for a time many young men would be the prey of experi- 
enced women. They would be much more than offset, 
however, by the young women who are now made the 
prey of experienced men. The answer to such an objection is 
very simple. The man will, himself, have chosen such a 
woman as his companion. Let him exert his strength and 
his will upon himself and be more careful. He surely will 
be more careful. Ere long there will be no experienced 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

women to prey upon him and the inmates of disorderly 
houses will be scattered more effectually than by raids of the 
police when the way has been opened to young women who 
have yielded to emotion nevertheless to lead respectable Uves. 
4. The most conspicuous and serious failures in the 
administration of justice in our courts occur not at all 
in the cases of defendants who possess wealth, as is often 
alleged, but through the irresponsible meddling of the 
press with those of a sensational character or those which 
concern people of prominence, and the publication of which, 
therefore, has a salable value. It is not to be expected 
that the members of a jury will weigh in even balance the 
evidence presented to them in the case of a man charged 
with murder, when his face, brutalized by some artist 
employed for the purpose, and the facts distorted to increase 
the horror, have been forced upon their attention for 
weeks before. In fact, the whole doctrine of the liberty 
of the press is a harmful anachronism. There ought to be 
no liberty of the press. There was a time when the inter- 
ests of the people were served by it, a time when the liberties 
and even the lives of men were sacrificed by the arbitrary 
exercise of the authority of the state, but that time has 
long gone. The newspaper was then a means of supplying 
information upon which men could depend in the guidance 
of these affairs, but the conditions have entirely changed 
and it too has changed with them. In our day a news- 
paper, generally owned by a corporation, is organized for 
the purpose of making money for the stockholders by the 
sale of news. The motive is commercial. Its forces are 
directed, not toward the supply of information because 
it is true, but toward the securing of that which can be 
sold on the market. Like all vendors, its wares ought to 
be subject to supervision, and when, like bad meat and 
rotten eggs, they are found to be unhealthful they ought 
to be confiscated and suppressed. When the Government 
inspects foods, examines doctors and lawyers and super- 
212 



JUDGE 

vises factories, mines and railroads, why permit filth, 
crime and falsehood to be published? 

The courts might have protected the administration 
of justice had it not been for an unfortunate decision by 
Chief Justice Sharswood in the case of ex parte Steinman 
and Hensel, 95 Penna. State Reports, p. 220, where he 
practically overruled the opinion of Chief Justice Gibson 
in Austen's Case, 5 Rawle, 191. Two lawyers, who were 
also newspaper editors, in their newspapers charged the 
court with making a corrupt judicial decision for political 
reasons. The Act of 1836 limits punishment for contempt 
of court 'Ho such contempts as shall be committed in 
open court." This offense was committed outside the 
courtroom. The limitation constitutes an absurd dis- 
tinction, since an order by a court has no relation to doors 
and windows, and it was a legislative attempt to lessen 
the constitutional power of the courts. The court below 
disbarred the lawyers and Sharswood reinstated them. 
He probably failed to see to what extent he was enabling 
newspapers to interfere with the functions of the judiciary 
and was surrendering the prerogatives of himself and his 
successors on the bench. Substantially all of the injustice 
which I have known to occur in the course of trials in our 
courts has been the result of this kind of outside influence 
which some judges have not sufficient strength of character 
to resist. With its present tendencies the press is gallop- 
ing along the road which leads inevitably to the overthrow 
in the near future of their constitutional privileges. 

In the summer of 1890 Mrs. Pennypacker and I took 
a trip to Europe. Mr. Blaine sent me the following letter: 

Department of State, 
Washington, June 19, 1890. 
To the Diplomatic and Consular 

Officers oj the United States. 
Gentlemen: It affords me pleasure to introduce to you 
the Honorable Samuel W. Pennypacker, Judge of the Court of 

213 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Common Pleas of Philadelphia, Trustee of the University of 
Pennsylvania and Vice-President of the Historical Society of 
Pennsylvania. I bespeak for Judge Pennypacker your official 
courtesies during his sojourn abroad. 

I am, gentlemen, your obedient servant, 

James G. Blaine. 

We left Philadelphia on the Red Star Steamer "Bel- 
genland," July 16th, and after crossing the ocean, going 
through the English Channel, and up the Scheldt, landed 
at Antwerp July 29th. The company on the boat, while 
not so numerous as on the great steamers, was in some 
respects unusual, and in the course of the long voyage they 
were pretty closely welded together. There were a con- 
course of physicians, including Dr. F. P. Henry and Dr. 
Philip Leidy, who were going over to attend a medical 
convention, and there were three school teachers who 
had been determined by ballot to be the most popular 
in the state, and were being given the outing by the Phila- 
delphia Press. They were the Misses Elizabeth D. Grant, 
Annie M. Bishop and Jennie M. Davis. For an enter- 
tainment given on the way over I wrote a number of jeux 
d'esprit touching up some of the passengers and the lighter 
events which happened. They were written in pencil 
on the back of a paper novel, which, being thrown away, 
was found by the steward and sold to a newspaper. Much 
to my surprise, on my return, I found them making the 
newspaper rounds, and I now include three of them: 

Out at sea there's a lady named Davis; 
To her note book she but a slave is; 

She writes down within it 

What happens each minute, 
And when Godwin upset by the wave is. 

The minister went to sea, 

The minister soon got sick. 
It cared no more for him 

Than for any heretic. 

214 



JUDGE 

The captain is jolly and round, 

His stomach and lungs are both sound, 

With one foot on the bridge and one eye on the sun, 
He spreads out his sail 
To catch every gale, 

While the passengers watch him to see how it's done. 

At Antwerp the party scattered and went their several 
ways. Godwin, a very agreeable gentleman, who had gone 
abroad for a rest and left his wife and family at home, 
oppressed with the loneliness of the situation, met Mrs. 
Pennypacker and myself again in the Zoological Garden. 
He hurried forward to present a bouquet, and after a separa- 
tion of a day we came together like long-lost friends. Two 
things we soon learned to avoid — the beaten routes of travel 
where ignorant guides show you the new things you can 
better see at home, and the table d'hote dinners which 
injure your stomach and waste your time. Through the 
advice of E. V. Lansdale, a society man of experience, we 
put up in Antwerp, at the Hotel de la Paix, but did not like 
it. In the Temple of Cloaca I found this rather naive notice : 
"On est prie de ne pas rester debout sur la siege." We 
examined the cathedral with its treasured Rubens' Descent 
from the Cross, there meeting Bishop O. W. Whitaker 
and his wife, but found the most interest in the 
narrow old streets along the Scheldt, the carts pulled 
by dogs, the women gathering the garbage, but most 
of all in the old stone prison ''La Steen" with its 
dungeons in which some of my people, in the sixteenth 
century, had been confined before being burned and 
beheaded. In Holland, at The Hague, we saw, of course, 
Paul Potter's Bull and Scheveningen, but The Hague 
itself had become a modern city and was disappointing. 
At Haarlem we saw the tulip garden, heard the great 
church organ played and at the town hall stood wonder- 
ingly before those old burgomasters whom Franz Hals 
has kept alive through the centuries since. Dutch art 

215 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

was influenced by no fads and is the real thing carried to 
perfection. 

In Amsterdam I called on Dr. J. G. DeHoop Scheffer, the 
author of the History of the Reformation in the Netherlands, 
with whom I had been corresponding for years and spent a 
very pleasant evening with him talking about Mennonite 
literature. We attended services in the Gude Kerk where 
so many noted Dutchmen are buried, including the famous 
old Admiral Michel de Ruyter, who fought thirty-two 
naval battles. An invitation to his funeral is among my 
papers at Pennypacker's Mills. In the Rijks Museum we 
stayed long before Rembrandt's Night Watch and the head 
of the Old Woman. In going from a lower to a higher stretch 
of canal the boat stopped while the water rushed in to fill 
the enclosure. The hearty-looking Dutch skipper took 
advantage of the opportunity to collect the fares. I had no 
small change and handed him a ten florin gold piece worth 
about four dollars which he laid on the leaf of his open note 
book while he felt around in his pockets. Just then a blast 
of wind turned the leaves of his book and the gold piece went 
to the bottom of the canal. ''Damn it to hell ! " he exclaimed 
in as good English as any irritated and disappointed resident 
of New York could have uttered. At Broek we saw the 
cows with their tails tied up and the sawdust of their stalls 
worked into ornamental figures and at Zaandam the wind- 
mills and the house of Peter the Great. At Marken, which 
even then had been much spoiled by the current of visitors, 
we engaged Klaas De Witt to take us in his fishing boat 
across the Zuyder Zee to Monnikendam, from which town 
had come the first man to sail up the Delaware River, 
and where we climbed the tower, saw the church and were 
followed through the streets by an amazed crowd of Dutch 
urchins and lasses in wooden shoes. After we started from 
Marken, Klaas kicked off his sabots and threw them into a 
corner of the boat. Why did you do that?" I inquired. 
"I can swim better without them," was the rather unsatis- 
216 



JUDGE 

factory answer. But the most attractive town we found 
in Holland was s'Hertogenbosch, or Bois le Due, the old 
capital of Brabant. Travelers seldom went there. Enclos- 
ing the city are still the old wall and ditch. In the fine old 
cathedral the sacristan tells with bated breath how the 
Protestants knocked the heads and fingers off of the 
statuary. In the museum is shown the bag with its stains 
of blood into which the head rolled as the executioner cut it 
off. In the market sat the country women laughing and 
having a good time over their salad and cabbage. In the 
inn was a kitchen filled with brass and copper, so bright 
that it was a joy to behold, and in the dining-room was an 
omelet to be yet remembered with gusto, and cheeses of 
every kind. 

In Crefeld, from which so many people came to Ger- 
man town, a city whose great silk manufactories are the out- 
come of the simple weaving of the early Mennonites, we slept 
with a feather bed for a cover and another feather bed for 
the support. Years before, Frederick Muller of Amsterdam 
had told me that in this city was a genealogy in manuscript 
of the Schenten family which contained much information 
concerning the Op den Graeffs. There were many Schenten 
names in the directory, and on a venture I selected Carl. 
His counting house was in the second story. In such Ger- 
man as I could muster I explained to him that I was con- 
nected with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and 
interested in genealogical research; that I had heard of the 
existence of the manuscript and was anxious to discover 
its whereabouts. 

''Are you looking for an estate?" he inquired. 

"Oh, no, my interest is purely historical." 

"Well," he said, "you are the first American I ever saw 
who was not looking for money." Then he went to his 
safe and produced the book. I had come straight to its 
owner. It carried one of my ancestral lines back to about 
1584. I visited the village of Aldekerk, a dirty little town 

217 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

filled with squat houses and a great church, where Herman 
Op den Graeff was born. He was a delegate to the Con- 
vention of Dordrecht in 1632 and the grandfather of the 
three brothers and sister who came to Germantown in 1683. 

In Cologne we saw a remnant of the old Roman Wall, 
the great cathedral, the skulls of the eleven thousand virgins 
wrapped around with red velvet, the vase in which the 
water was turned into wine, and Dr. James Tyson, the 
noted Philadelphia physician. We are related in two ways, 
since he is a Pennypacker and I am a Tyson. We went up 
the Rhine by boat and every foot of the journey called up 
some early family association. At Worms we saw the 
stately mansion of Johann Pfannebecker, Geheimer Regie- 
rungs Rath, and Stadts Advokat, with its memorial tablet 
setting forth that there he had entertained the Emperor 
William. From there we drove across the Palatinate, 
whose well-tilled fields suggested Pennsylvania, though 
they were without barns and fences. At one place was 
posted a large advertisement informing the people that 
a negro was on exhibition and could be seen for ten cents. 
At the village of Oberflorsheim we stopped to water the horses 
and a healthy-looking, vigorous young fellow came across 
the road carrying a rake. I said to him: 

"Was ist ihr nahm?" 

"Mein nahme ist Pfannebecker," was the rather sur- 
prising response. 

"Und mein nahme ist Pannebecker auch." 

I continued: "Was ist ihr handel?" 

"Ich bin ein Bauer," he said. 

'Teh bin ein Richter," and we parted. 

At Kriegsheim, the village from which came also many 
of the early settlers of Germantown, I endeavored to locate 
the place where Penn had preached and was referred to the 
wiseacre of the place, who was likewise the town-gauger. 
He could tell me nothing of Penn, but he was hospitable and 
he took me to the cellar where were kept the hogsheads of 
218 



JUDGE 

wine. He filled a glass from the first hogshead and ten- 
dered it and I drank the wine. He drew a glass full from the 
second hogshead and tendered it again. There were about 
thirty hogsheads in the cellar. Saying *'danke sie" and 
"lebt wohl," I withdrew. We are told in the Nibelungenlied 
that: 

"Never were men so merry as these beside the Rhine." 
Then we came to Flomborn, perhaps fifteen miles across 
the Palatinate from Worms, a village of three or four hundred 
people, of whom about half bore the name of Pfannebecker. 
The bans of one of them, a girl about to be married, were 
nailed up against the church door. In the graveyard large 
flat stones covered the graves of those who were dead. 
The inn-keeper, who seemed a little surly when we took our 
horses into the yard to be fed, came running out after us 
on to the street, his face all smiles, to tell us that his wife 
was a Pfannebecker, and she, the good-hearted soul that she 
was, almost cried with joy to see a ''Pfannebecker aus 
Amerika " as she tendered her cakes and wine. I was much 
impressed by seeing the children drive the flocks of geese up 
from the pastures, and I had them, together with every- 
thing else in the village photographed. Frederick P., the 
most important personage of the place, worth about 
$90,000, took us to his home to have us meet his wife, and 
son bearing the same name. 

At Heidelberg, after looking over the University, which 
seemed to me dull and out of date, and the Tun, which was 
certainly large, and the Schloss, a most beautiful and 
impressive ruin, we climbed the mountain which rises from 
the Neckar in order that we might get a view of the Valley 
of the Rhine and the Neckar and the Taunus mountains. 
On the way up we overtook Catharine Grimm, a woman of 
about forty, who twice a week carried upon her head all of 
the supplies needed for the inn at the crest from the city 
below. She wanted us to take her home with us, poor 
woman, and little wonder. On the way down, after rejoic- 

219 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

ing over the beautiful and extended stretch of varied 
scenery, I saw an artist sitting under a tree making a sketch. 
I said to her: 

"Konnen sie mir zeigen das weg zum Schloss?" 

"Oh, can't you talk English?" she replied. 

I had to acknowledge that I could, and she pointed out 
the path. 

A curious sight to an American in Germany at that time 
were the two little houses side by side at the railroad stations 
marked ''Herren" and "Frauen." When the cars stopped 
and the doors were unlocked the men and women, who have 
been shut in without accommodations, rushed in hurried 
lines to these places. 

Another curious sight was to see a woman and a cow 
strapped together plowing a field. It is not, however, 
nearly so barbaric a performance as the mere telling would 
indicate, since the cow supplies the motive force and the 
woman is there to direct it. 

At Basle I had a fright. The train stopped among a 
number of others, and leaving Mrs. Pennypacker, I got off 
and went for a few minutes to a " Restaurations Keller." 
When I returned, depending on location, the train had been 
shifted, and I could not find the car. She could talk neither 
French nor German and had no money. However, the 
deliberateness of the railroad service stood me in good stead. 
I had plenty of time to hunt, was finally successful and had 
learned a lesson. 

The Alps, glistening in the sunlight for fifty miles, to 
us who had never before seen snow in the summer time, 
were wonderful. We had an uncomfortable hotel at Geneva. 
I could find no one in the town who could tell me where 
Michael Servetus was burned, the most interesting event to 
me in connnection with it, or who had ever even heard of 
Servetus, but I watched the Rhine and thought of Caesar. 
We went fifty miles by stage to Chamounix at the foot of 
Mont Blanc. The crush of the glaciers in their slow march 
220 



JUDGE 

and the roar when a mass of ice falls from the end, the 
streams of melted water galloping in a mad rush down the 
mountain sides and the horses standing knee-deep in the ice- 
cold torrent, because the natives regard it as good for their 
feet (they don't stand there themselves), other streams 
pouring over precipices and disappearing in mist before they 
reach the ground, the vast masses of rock, stretching toward 
the skies with the whitened vales between, all held our 
attention and fixed themselves in our memories. We had 
solemnly and resolutely determined we would do no Alpine 
climbing. The next morning, early, we bought alpenstocks 
and followed on foot the zigzag path which leads up the 
Mont Aubert. It is a narrow path. The mules coming 
down insisted upon having the inside next the mountain. 
But about noon we reached the hotel which overhangs the 
Mer de Glace. From the outer court we could see, far 
below, men and an occasional woman crossing the glacier. 
The temptation was too great and good resolutions were con- 
signed to the pavement. We secured a French guide. He 
supplied us with alpenstocks and woolen socks to pull over 
our shoes, and he led the way, with a hatchet cutting steps 
in the hillocks of ice and helping us to avoid the dangerous 
crevasses. We looked down into some of these splits in the 
ice. The man who falls into one comes out in about thirty 
years at the foot of the mountain. I do not know the 
width of the Mer de Glace, but it seemed to be like crossing 
about two seven-acre fields. On the far side was a moraine 
which we climbed. Then the guide asked whether we wanted 
to go around "le Mauvais Pas.'' I said to him: 

''Je n'aime pas les Mauvaises Pas. Qu'est que c'est?" 
He replied that it would be no worse than to go back 
over the Mer de Glace, and that after getting to the other 
end we would have a good road back to Chamounix. We 
knew the difficulties behind, we did not know those in the 
front, and we went ahead, trusting to Providence and a 
French guide. What the Swiss have named a "Bad Path" 

221 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

was, as may well be imagined, not a very enticing or com- 
fortable route. It was a narrow and irregular ledge running 
across the face of an almost perpendicular mountain. It 
hung over the Mer de Glace, far below and was perhaps 
three hundred yards in length. It would have been impas- 
sible but for the fact that an iron rod had been fastened in 
the face of the rock about shoulder high which could be 
grasped with the hand, but, sad to relate, there was a gap 
in the middle where the rod had been broken away. There 
were places where the water trickled across the path and 
made it slippery. At such places Asbury E. Irwin, who was 
with us, got down on his hands and knees, regardless of 
trousers. I told the Frenchman he would have to help me 
and to take Mrs. Pennypacker to the other end and come 
back. Presently he returned, but on getting around an edge 
of the rock there I found her clinging to the rod and looking 
down upon the sea of ice. I had had a wrong conception 
of the length of the Mauvais Pas. Since that arrangement 
would not work, I sent him ahead to her and took care of 
myself. We presently reached safely Le Chapeau, a hut at 
the other end of this path, and with no further adventure 
save that a cow came sliding down the mountain and 
nearly fell on us, we got to the hotel after dark and tired 
enough. From Chamounix we crossed the Tete Noir to 
Martigny in a barouche. The road zigzags over the great 
mountain and is just about wide enough for a single team. 
In fact, the carriage was at times so near the edge that I 
preferred walking behind it to riding in it. At a hotel on 
the top a yard had been made large enough for the teams 
meeting there to pass each other and the drivers had to 
time their movements accordingly. By some mischance on 
this particular day there was a misfit and they met on the 
road. The teamsters swore at each other for an hour, but 
that failed to solve the difficulty. Finally they joined 
together and held some of the wagons up on the mountain 
side until the others passed. 
222 



JUDGE 

At Villeneuve we saw the Castle Chillon with its dancing 
halls above and its dungeons below and the little island of 
Childe Harold in the lake, and getting on a boat, crossed 
Lake Geneva lengthwise to Geneva. From there we went 
by rail across France to Paris. Irwin took us to a modest 
hotel, the Bergere, where our bill for five days, including 
some wine, was only one hundred and eighteen francs for 
both of us, or twenty-three dollars and sixty cents. 

At the Louvre from the fifteen miles of paintings La Gio- 
conda smiled upon us, and we then went to Versailles, where, 
apart from the palace with its historic interest and the 
gardens with their beauty, were two paintings which impres- 
sed me. One represented the Battle of Sedan. On a crest 
stood in life size an officer. Off in the distance was a little 
smoke. It was the artist's idea of a battle. The other picture 
told the story of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown 
to the French fleet. Washington had nothing whatever to 
do with it. I had grown up under another impression, 
but still perhaps it is well to modify these early impressions. 
I said to a man whom I met in the street in Paris: 

"Pouvez vous me dire ou est 1' Eiffel Tour?" emphas- 
izing the first syllable in Eiffel. He looked at me in blank 
amazement. After a long conversation he said: 

''Vous pensez au Tour Eiffel?" 

"Oui, Monsieur." 

Then he pointed out the way. 

We went to the opera, where Mrs. Pennypacker had a 
great struggle to retain her cloak with a French woman who 
insisted upon taking it away as she talked at the top of her 
speed, but in the end American grit prevailed. The French 
people, as I saw them at their work, impressed me as being 
more rather bright and cultivated, than earnest and strong. 
They seemed eager to finish their tasks and get away to the 
concert gardens. Amusement appeared to be a motive in 
life. We had crossed the ocean and the Zuyder Zee and Lake 
Geneva without being seasick and the English Channel had 

223 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

no terrors for us. On our way to London we took the long 
route from Dieppe to New Haven. As we got on to the 
mean, creaky and overloaded little boat, I overheard the 
skipper say to a woman who had a six-year-old child with 
her: "Madam, if I were you I would take that boy down 
stairs and put him on his back in a cot." It was an ominous 
suggestion. The channel was in bad shape. A trip, usually 
finished in two hours, on this day required six. Everybody 
was seasick. The floor of the saloon was filled with groaning 
women. On the deck where I was I saw a deck hand thrown 
flat by a toss of the sea. I paid a couple of the seamen to 
take Mrs. Pennypacker below and I abandoned her to her 
fate. Sitting on a camp stool, I steadied myself by clutch- 
ing a staple driven into the wall of the saloon, and cold, sick 
and miserable, let the sea beat over me as it willed. 
Thrusting my hand into my overcoat pocket to warm it 
up, I found there occupying the space a pound of confection- 
ery bought in Paris to eat on the voyage. I threw it with 
disgust into the sea. One poor woman who sat near me by 
the rail absorbed salt water apparently by the pail full and 
I never offered to help her. All the while the boat strained 
and quivered and creaked and nobody cared. It was so 
crowded that the men were forced to remain upon deck with 
the beating sea for solace, and as the hours rolled by and the 
darkness of the coming night came over them not a word was 
uttered. It was an experience worth a trip to Europe. 

We stayed in London about a week and put up at the 
Charing Cross. We rode on top of the omnibuses and 
watched with interest the tangle of cabs in Threadneedle 
Street. We stood on London Bridge, went through St. 
Paul's, saw the grave of Milton and the bit of the old Roman 
Wall and attended a service in Westminster, where the 
beauties of the prayer book were mouthed in a way I could 
not appreciate. When I asked who broke off the fingers of 
Queen Elizabeth I was told it was done by Cromwell and 
his ragamufiins, which I did not believe. I said to a girl 
224 



JUDGE 

who waited upon us in a dining-room about three squares 
away: 

"I suppose you go often to Westminster." 

''Do you mean the Habbey?" 

"Yes." 

"I 'ave never been in the Habbey in my Hfe. I don't 
often get away from 'ere and when I do I 'ave other places 
to go to beside the Habbey." 

On one slab is only the name "Charles Dickens." No 
more is needed. We went through Windsor Castle, saw the 
Burnham Beeches and the yew of Gray's Elegy at Stoke 
Pogis. 

At the Tower the room in which the jewels were kept 
was closed. The tall flunkey with a big hat and a most 
gorgeous covering for clothes refused to open it. A brilliant 
thought occurred to me and I produced the letter from 
Blaine, the American Secretary of State. The scheme 
worked beautifully and he opened the door. The con- 
sequential piece of red tape egotism assumed, however, that 
the letter was written to him personally and he deliberately 
proceeded to put it in his pocket. Then I was in trouble. 
However, by the use of persuasion and even threat I finally 
recovered my credentials. 

We went to Hyde Park in a cab and were refused 
admittance unless we should get out and walk. Only the 
equipages of gentlemen were permitted in the Park. 

From London we went to Coventry, where we found the 
Craven Arms, a real old-fashioned inland English inn. 
Intending to remain but a few days, I sent my trunk through 
to Liverpool, where we intended to take the City of New 
York for our return home. I said to the official: 

"Have you no system of checking baggage?" 

"No." 

"How do you identify the owners?" I inquired. 

"We never have any trouble." 

I gave him some money. He tore off a slip of newspaper, 
16 225 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

on which he wrote his initials and gave it to me and 
promised that he would see to it that I should find my trunk 
in the baggage room in Liverpool. 

Coventry is a most interesting old town, though Ameri- 
cans go to Leamington in preference, redolent with the 
memories of the Lady Godiva, mystery plays, tournaments 
in which knights errant in the days of chivalry fought for 
the favor of fair women, Sherwood Forest with its tales of 
Robin Hood and his merry men, battles of kings for their 
thrones and, in later days, of George Fox the Quaker. Here 
may be seen the walls and gates which shut out the enemy 
and stranger, ancient tapestries, curiously built houses and 
the three spires which impressed Tennyson. We drove to 
Kenilworth, rich in its traditions, but found little there 
save the merest remnants of a ruined castle and a field of 
oats, the half of which appeared to be Canada thistle. 
This thistle, protected by the hedges, has overrun the whole 
island and must be a serious drawback to agriculture. At 
Leicester hospital we were shown some needlework attri- 
buted to the unfortunate Amy Robsart. We inspected 
Warwick Castle, with its portrait of Henry VIH, and since 
my lineage has been traced to the Kingmaker, with a faint 
reflection of proprietorship. At Stratford we saw the birth- 
place of Shakespeare, a house insignificant and mean in all 
of its suggestions. The church was being repaired and I 
secured a bit of old worm-eaten wood which had been 
removed from above the famous inscription. 

At Liverpool I went to the man in charge of the baggage 
room and sought my trunk. He looked over his books and 
said he had no record of it. He sent men over the building 
who hunted and returned reporting that it could not be 
found. 

''You must find it," I said with some indignation. 
''We leave in the boat for America tomorrow and I must 
have my trunk." 

"Perhaps it is in the lost department," said he. 
226 



JUDGE 

"Perhaps it is," I responded. 

He and I, with some assistants, went to this place, a 
huge caravansary filled with the property of other unfor- 
tunates. A search of half an hour, while Mrs. Pennypacker 
sat in dismal patience in the depot, failed to reveal it. 

'^I can do no more," said he. 

"I believe that trunk is over there in the building from 
which we started," I replied, ''and I will find it myself." 
That fellow in London impressed me as being reliable and 
he said he would see to it that I should find it there. I 
believe he did." 

There, down in the cellar, far back in a corner I found my 
trunk. Then from the figures on it the baggageman was 
able to trace the entries in his books. The incident illus- 
trates the results of the pig-headedness of the English in 
refusing to adopt a system so simple as that of checking 
baggage, after its utility has been long demonstrated. On 
the City of New York I met Richard Croker, the head of the 
Tammany Club in New York, a silent man who gave the 
suggestion of great force. 

''Did anybody ever tell you that you looked like General 
Grant?" I inquired. 

"Yes," he replied. 

Another time he said to me: "I like your man. Quay. 
I never met him, but I think he must be much of a man." 
One of the most agreeable features of a European trip is 
the return. After having been fed upon sole and vegetable 
marrow, to find yourself again where you may eat lima beans, 
corn, sweet potatoes and tomatoes, has its satisfactions. 
Three months are long enough to be away. To untangle the 
twisted threads of memory which confuse the ill-digested 
contents of museums and art galleries is a relief. To meet 
again the familiar faces of those whose lives are interwoven 
with yours is a sweetness and a comfort. 



227 



CHAPTER IX 
President Judge 

IN 1891 I had before me a case of Commonwealth vs. 
Tierney. The defendant was charged with selling 
liquor without a license and, it appeared, had made 
the sale, as steward of a club which had been incor- 
porated as a social organization, to one of its members. The 
club dues were merely nominal, the club property was very 
meager, and the club was one of those corporations which 
had sprung up all over the city, whose real purpose w^s no 
doubt to furnish hquors. In an elaborate opinion reviewing 
all of the authorities and working out all of the reasoning of 
which the subject was capable, I held that a club had no 
right, in the absence of a license, to sell hquors to its mem- 
bers. The decision raised a great storm, for the reason 
that the rich and influential hkewise had their clubs, the 
Union League, the Rittenhouse, the Philadelphia and many 
more, and to deprive them of this concomitant of club life 
was a serious matter. I had thought of its effect, but was 
unable to draw any satisfactory distinction in principle 
between the clubs of high and low life and took the responsi- 
bility. The case went to the Supreme Com-t and there the 
Chief Justice, E. M. Paxson, a worldly wise man who had 
grown rich and later resigned his office to accept the Receiver- 
ship of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, affirmed the 
judgment, but put it on the ground that this particular 
club was a fraud. Little by little the reasoning of my 
opinion, which still seems to me unanswerable, was left 
without support and the courts drifted into the conclusion 
that the sale of Hquor by a club to its members was in reahty 
not a sale but a process of equitable distribution. The result 
228 



PRESIDENT JUDGE 

was a great development of what has been called the ''Speak 
Easy," and there have been recent efforts to have my position 
put in the shape of legislation. 

In 1891 the Pennsylvania German Society was organized 
among the descendants of the early German and Swiss 
settlers of the state. Among those who took the preliminary 
steps were Dr. William H. Egle, F. R. Diffenderffer of Lan- 
caster, Col. T. C. Zinamerman of Berks, Julius F. Sachse, 
George F. Baer, General James A. Beaver and myself. No 
other of the different race societies has been so energetic 
in the study of the sources of history or so prolific in the 
production of literature. My Settlement of Germantown 
appeared among its publications and for one year I was 
president of the society. 

That summer Senator Quay paid me a visit at Moore 
Hall, and I had Dr. Joseph W. Anderson of Ardmore there 
to meet him. We were all three descendants of Major 
Patrick Anderson of the Revolutionary Army and had this 
bond of association. The doctor was a bland and mild- 
mannered person of wealth and great respectability. His 
father. Dr. James Anderson, was the oldest brother of my 
Grandmother Pennypacker. When a young man Dr. 
James Anderson bought a farm not far from Philadelphia 
and there practiced medicine. My grandfather, who was 
accustomed to good land and fine meadows, said: ''I don't 
see what James ever bought that poor farm for." It is 
difficult to forecast. The Pennsylvania Railroad put the 
Ardmore Station on that farm and the lands retained by the 
family are worth from $8,000 to $25,000 an acre. I took the 
Senator to the little house along the bank of the Pickering, 
where his grandfather had hved, to the site near a spring 
where James Anderson, the first settler, had built his log 
cabin in the woods, to the Anderson graveyard where he 
had his grandmother buried, to Valley Forge, and on Sunday 
we attended service at St. David's at Radnor. While at 
Moore Hall news came of the death of Charles S. Wolfe. 

229 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

"Poor fellow!" said the Senator with genuine sympathy. 
* ' He was a worthy man." And then : " I was just arranging 
a plan to beat him." 

October 21st, I dehvered the annual address before the 
Law Academy upon some early decisions of the courts of 
the province, and this address was afterward expanded into 
a volume of reports entitled Pennsylvania Colonial Cases. 

On the 22d of December the New England Society of 
Pennsylvania gave their eleventh annual dinner. My 
speech was as follows : 

It must be understood at the outset that I am not here as a 
"regular," nor yet as a "volunteer," nor even as an "emergency 
man," but as a sort of substitute. My earnest and persuasive 
friend, Mr. Mumford, came to my house last evening and said to 
me, the youngest member of a court of three judges, two of whom 
are down with the grippe, that there was a likelihood of there being 
a scarcity of speakers here tonight and that I must come and 
furnish relief. I have come; but from what I have seen and heard 
since I have been here, and being aware that if I am known at all 
it is as an avowed Pennsylvania Dutchman, I am inclined to think 
that what your secretary had in mind in bringing me forward was 
a species of bear-baiting. If, therefore, you should be disappointed 
in the tone or substance of what I have to say you may at least 
entertain the hope that if I had had plenty of time and nothing to 
do, I might have prepared something entertaining, instructive 
and complimentary as did the speakers who have preceded me. 

Before coming away from home I put into my pocket a little 
book, compiled by Nathaniel Dwight, and published at Hartford, 
in the State of Connecticut, in the year 1807. It is entitled A 
System of the Geography of the World — By Way of Question and 
Answer, Principally Designed for Children and Common Schools. 
Its substance was administered to babes and growing children, 
and they were expected to commit to memory the answers given 
here and to recite them to their attentive teachers. I read from 
the Questions and Answers: 

"What are the general characteristics of the people of New 
England?" 

"They are an industrious and orderly people . . . they 
are well informed in general. . . . They are humane and 
friendly, wishing well to the human race. They are plain and 

230 



PRESIDENT JUDGE 

simple in their manners and on the whole they form perhaps the 
most pleasing and happy society in the world," 

"What is the temper of the people of New England?" 
"They are frank and open, not easily irritated but easily paci- 
fied. They are at the same time bold and enterprising. The 
women are educated to housewifery, excellent companions and 
housekeepers, spending their leisure time in reading books of 
useful information and rendering themselves not only useful but 
amiable and pleasing." 

"What is the state of science in New England?" 
" It is greatly cultivated and more generally diffused among the 
inhabitants than in any other part of the world." 
"What is the character of the Pennsylvanians? " 
"Pennsylvania is inhabited by a great variety of people. 
, Many of the yeomanry in some parts of this state differ 
greatly from the New Englanders, for the former are impatient 
of good government, order and regularity, and the latter are 
orderly, regular and loyal." 

The lessons thus early taught have been well learned. I 
remember, that some two or three years ago one of the eloquent 
and witty gentlemen who respond upon these festive occasions was 
called up to reply to a toast which met the approval and received 
the applause of the assembled members — "Benjamin Franklin, 
the Discoverer of Philadelphia." 

In a certain sense I admit the fact that lies concealed in that 
witticism, and in that sense concede that Benjamin Franklin 
was the discoverer of Philadelphia. When the cumulative forces 
of civilization, which had been gathering for fifteen centuries had 
made their way across the Atlantic and several centuries later had 
extended beyond the Mississippi and reached the base of the 
Rocky Mountains — then the potato bug discovered the potato. 
In 1723 a young man of seventeen years walked from the Delaware 
up Market Street to Fourth. He was a youth of scanty means 
and I may say of less morals. He saw the accumulated shipping 
at the wharves, he saw the State House and warehouses of a pros- 
perous and growing community, and in the market house which 
ran along the center of the street he saw the rich products which 
had come down from the farms of Lancaster and Chester counties. 
It was a spectacle the like of which never before had met his gaze 
and — Benjamin Franklin discovered Philadelphia. For sixty 
years he walked the streets of this great city, beaming benevolence 
and beneficence upon men of substance and influence, and casting 
cheerful glances upon lustful young women. He lived to a good 

231 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

old and honored age, and he died, his head stored with worldly 
wisdom and his pockets filled with the accumulations of his long 
and eventful life. He left behind him an autobiography in which, 
in his own inimitable way, he told how he personally had organized 
all the charitable and learned institutions that had grown up while 
he was a resident of this city. This autobiography, beautiful in 
structure, was translated into the different languages of Europe 
and he gained extended fame. Over the library in which were 
the books that had been collected by that learned scholar, James 
Logan, was placed the statue of Benjamin Franklin. The central 
window of that great University, which was led to success by Dr. 
William Smith, against his opposition, shows the record of the 
great achievements of Benjamin Franklin, and over every house 
and every barn in the land a lightning rod pointing heavenward 
testifies to the popular judgment of his scientific attainments and 
his eternal reward. 

I have been asked to respond to the toast "The Keystone and 
Plymouth Rock." For the long line of distinguished men New 
England has produced, Pennsylvania has only to express her 
sincere appreciation and her emphatic approval. In all her efforts 
to ameliorate the condition of the human race and to advance the 
cause of literature and of science, Pennsylvania has had the warm 
support of the sons of New England. The American Philosophical 
Society, which was the first of our scientific institutions, has had 
in that blessed land many successors. The Law Department of 
the University of Pennsylvania, established in 1791, and the 
Medical Department of the University, established in 1765, have 
been followed by departments devoted to the same learned pur- 
suits at Harvard. The resolutions adopted in town meeting in 
the city of Philadelphia on the 16th of October, 1773, forbidding 
the landing of tea on these shores, were adopted and accepted in 
precisely the same words by the people of Boston in their town 
meeting on the 6th of November of the same year. The principles 
of the Revolution, the keynote of which, set by John Dickinson 
in his Farmers' Letters, echoed across Boston Common, were 
carried to their logical conclusion by John Adams of Massachusetts. 

The adoption of the Constitution of the United States in Penn- 
sylvania in December, 1787, was followed by its adoption in Massa- 
chusetts in February, 1788. The principles of religious Hberty, 
established by Penn in Pennsylvania, in 1682, now prevail in 
every hamlet and township from Maine to Connecticut. The 
great struggle with slavery in this country, begun in the town of 
Germantown in 1688, to which Benjamin Lay, John Woohnan 
232 



PRESIDENT JUDGE 

and Anthony Benezet devoted their lives in the last century, con- 
tinued by the organization of abolition societies and their meetings 
in convention here each year from 1794, was taken up by William 
Lloyd Garrison in 1831 in that bold declaration, equal in vigor 
to the words of Martin Luther at Worms: "I am in earnest. I 
will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single 
inch and I will be heard." When that great struggle against 
slavery resulted in war, the men of Pennsylvania, who came to 
the rescue and first reached the Capital at Washington, were 
soon followed by the men of Massachusetts, and in the battle 
of Gettysburg, where that wonderful soldier, George G. Meade, 
broke the back of the Rebellion in the very acme of that crisis, 
when the fate of the nation was involved in the issue and the 
advance of Pickett's division hurled itself to destruction against 
the Philadelphia brigade, that ever glorious brigade, stood more 
firmly because they knew the fact that the Rhode Island battery 
of Brown, the United States battery of Gushing, and the brave 
sons of Massachusetts of the Nineteenth and Twentieth regi- 
ments supported them on every side. 

This speech was applauded on the occasion of its deUvery ; 
it aroused attention and many distinguished men wrote 
to me in praise. A gentleman illustrated it with portraits 
and autographs, and after binding it in levant sent it to me. 
But I have never been invited to speak at a dinner of the 
New England Society since. 

The judges, in social parlance, were regarded as being 
possessed of too slender resources to be expected to enter- 
tain, but it was the proper thing to invite them to all of the 
important functions, and my cards of invitation and menus, 
all of which are preserved and bound in volumes, give a 
quite complete picture of this phase of life in Philadelphia, 
and even of the state, for twenty-five years. The best 
dinners of a public nature were served at the Bellevue, which 
stood at the northwest corner of Broad and Walnut streets, 
and has since been torn down and been succeeded by the 
Bellevue-Stratford. There I have heard all of the leading 
statesmen, politicians, generals, admirals, literary men and 
other conspicuous persons of my time make after-dinner 

233 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

speeches. The Clover Club and the Five o'Clock Club 
were the principal dining clubs and their style of entertain- 
ment was pretty much alike, giving their guests plenty of 
good champagne and expecting them to endure with com- 
placence all of the ribaldry which the combined wit of 
perhaps a hundred hosts could devise. The Society of the 
Cincinnati always gave an attractive dinner. They had a 
considerable fund of money, and after their Washington 
Monument in Fairmount Park and other expenditures were 
provided for, had nothing to do with it except once or twice 
a year to have a beautiful dinner. It was only excelled by 
that of the Directors of the Pennsylvania Company for 
Insurance on Lives and Granting Annuities, an ancient 
and very wealthy corporation. They gathered about a 
circular table upon which everything was of the best which 
money could secure, and the space in the center was banked 
with rare flowers. No outsiders were invited, save the 
judges and their counsel, John G. Johnson, who never drank 
anything except from a pitcher of lemonade prepared for 
him alone. The dining-room at the Bellevue was too limited 
in space to entertain a crowd and, therefore, the dinners 
were never unwieldy and never delayed. At the dinner 
of the Clover Club George G. Pierie always sang a crude 
song called "The Darby Ram," and at the dinner of the 
Five o'clock Club to each guest was presented a time-piece 
of some kind as a souvenir. 

In 1892 the Pennsylvania Society of the Colonial Dames 
of America, a society of women whose forefathers had borne 
some part in colonial public affairs prior to the Revolutionary 
War, was organized. Mrs. Pennypacker became a member 
and one of its controlling committee of thirteen. About the 
same time I was selected by the Pennsylvania Society Sons 
of the Revolution, of which I was then one of the board of 
managers and of which I have since become the senior vice- 
president, a delegate to the National Convention which 
met at Mount Vernon. A little later in the same year the 
234 



PRESIDENT JUDGE 

Netherlands Society of Philadelphia, comprised of descend- 
ants of the Dutch who were in America prior to the Revolu- 
tion, was formed at the suggestion of Dr. Peter Dirck Keyser. 
I was one of the first members and have since been its 
president. The spirit and the literature of this society 
have been excellent. Each year on the anniversary of the 
Convention of Utrecht, January 23, 1578, they drink a glass 
of schnapps, smoke a long pipe, listen to the rendering of 
''Wilhelmus van Nassau we, " by members of the Orpheus 
Club, and sing the song of The Dutch on the Delaware, written 
by my brother, Isaac R. Pennypacker, and set to music by 
Doctor Arnold Gantvoort, Director of the College of Music 
of Cincinnati. 

The first conviction of murder in the first degree in the 
City Hall at Broad and Market streets was that of a man 
tried before me. Job Haas, a coal dealer doing business 
in one of the suburbs of the city, belonged to a type which is 
now almost obsolete. He went to his place of business at 
the break of day. He had no faith in the security of banks 
and carried his cash upon his person. One morning before 
others were stirring he sat at his desk writing a bill for coal 
when a negro, named Henry Davis, crept up behind him 
with a club, crushed in his brain and stole his money. He 
fell over dead, his sleeve smearing the partly written biU, 
which I have preserved. The evidence was circumstantial 
but clear and left the jury and myself without doubt. The 
case interested me as a psychological study. Davis had been 
employed at the Midvale Steel Works, but had been dis- 
charged and was without a job and without money. The 
night before he went to see the woman to whom he was 
engaged to be married and told her his financial situation. 
Thereupon she promptly threw him overboard. The cause 
of this murder was the situation which has been outlined, 
the mood into which he, ignorant and undisciplined, was 
thrown by his surroundings, and the unusual opportunity 
given to him by a miserly old man. Another murder case 

235 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

interested me exceedingly because of the closeness of the 
legal questions involved. Nichola Bartilotte, convicted 
December 23, 1897, had a quarrel with another Italian, a 
larger man, in the course of which his thumb was so badly 
chewed that he was compelled to go to the hospital. After 
he had been cured, one day he thrust into his pocket a long- 
bladed knife, which I still have, and went down to the house 
of the other man, evidently on the lookout for trouble. The 
other man accepted the challenge and after some altercation 
Bartilotte ran. His antagonist pursued, picked up a large 
stone, overtook Bartilotte and, getting him down, lay on 
top of him, beating him over the head with the stone. By 
some means Bartilotte was able to open his knife and he 
plunged the blade into his foe, who rolled over helpless. 
Up to this time Bartilotte was legally safe from the charge 
of murder. He arose, hurt and bloody, went away to the 
distance of perhaps twenty-five feet, then returned and 
with a half dozen fierce blows of his knife put an end to the 
life of his foe who lay on the ground. The jury saved me 
from grave trouble by finding him guilty of murder in the 
second degree and I sentenced him to a long term of imprison- 
ment. The jury was probably about right in the conclusion 
it reached. I ever had a distrust, and even a sort of a horror, 
over the ways of the detective, and no man was ever con- 
victed before me of any offense upon such testimony alone. 
Like a prosecuting attorney who wants to convict, the object 
of the detective is not so much to inquire as to fasten the 
crime somewhere, and the methods used are those of dissimu- 
lation and falsehood. 

Just before I left the bench a boy of eleven years of 
age was tried before me for the murder of a playmate of six 
or seven years. The little fellow had a five-cent piece and 
the defendant had a toy pistol. The latter said: Give me 
that nickel." ''No, I won't," was the answer. "If you 
don't, I will shoot you." The child stood his ground and 
thereupon the defendant shot and killed him. The defend- 
236 



PRESIDENT JUDGE 

ant was locked up in prison, but the pistol, which was 
regarded as an essential part of the evidence, could nowhere 
be found. A detective went to him and, finding him crying, 
told him that if he would tell where the pistol was, he, the 
detective, would take him home to his father and mother. 
Thereupon the boy said he had thrown it into a quarry, 
describing the place, and the detective went there and 
found it. He testified to these facts at the trial and was 
much astonished and chagrined to hear the judge instruct 
the jury that they ought not to place the slightest reliance 
upon his evidence; that having charge of a child eleven 
years of age, he had, according to his own statement, delib- 
erately lied to the child in order to gain an advantage over 
him and, therefore, could be trusted by nobody. John 
Weaver, who was then district attorney, came to me 
privately to remonstrate on behalf of the detectives and was 
informed that the instructions could not be modified to the 
slightest extent. 

I once sent a man to prison for eight months for cutting 
off the tail of a dog. He had mutilated the animal and left 
it to perish miserably. Had a police officer who had made 
use of what is called 'Hhe third degree" with prisoners in 
his charge, or a gunner who had been shooting pigeons at a 
match, or a jockey who had docked the tail of his horse, or a 
doctor who had practiced vivisection, been brought before 
me while on the bench they would each have learned that 
the customs and technical needs of their professions would 
have been an unsafe dependence. The opponents of vivi- 
section make the mistake of standing upon the weak ground 
of utility where they are necessarily mistaken. Of course, 
something concerning human construction and diseases 
can be learned from cutting up a living animal. More 
could be learned by cutting up a human being, however. 
The answer to the doctors is that we have no business with 
the information that can only be secured in this way. Let 
us do without it. Let each creature bear its own ills. It 

237 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

is better that I should take the chance of dying of a tumor 
than that men should be taught to cut up living dogs to get 
possible information. A man may give the money he has 
stolen from a scoundrel to the poor, but that does not justify 
the theft. To the Jesuit doctrine of doing harm that good 
may come of it we had better say " Avaunt ! " " Vade retro 
Sathanas!" 

On the 16th of Febrary, 1893, I came pretty near to 
destruction. For several days I had been trying a rather 
important land damage case of Lukens vs. The City, in the 
second-story room of Congress Hall, the windows of which 
look upon Chestnut Street. I finished charging the jury 
about three o'clock. The plaintiff came to me to ask whether 
I would not wait and take the verdict. I hesitated for a 
moment, but concluding that it would make little difference 
to him and it was uncertain how long they would deliberate, 
I told the jury to seal their verdict and bring it in the next 
morning and I adjourned the court. I had hardly got out- 
side the room before the ceiling fell, filling the room with 
debris and crushing the bench at which I had been sitting 
and my chair to the floor. Various coatings of plaster had 
been applied through the century until they were eight 
inches thick and as solid as rock. This mass hung over me 
like the sword of .Damocles, ready to fall with the occurrence 
of any unusual rumble on the street, and that afternoon 
there was no place on earth more seemingly safe and in 
reality more dangerous. A wit at the bar said: "Fiat 
justitia ruat ceiling." 

About this time began the first talk about sending me to 
the Supreme Court of the state, and it received some sup- 
port from the bar and the newspapers. Fell, however, who 
was my superior in the court, had ambitions in that direction. 
We talked the matter over together, with the result that I 
concluded to make no effort at that time and so told him. 

In 1893 a number of gentlemen in the city interested in 
the collection and publication of out-of-the-way books, 
238 



PRESIDENT JUDGE 

organized the Philobiblon Club. Among them were James 
MacAlister; Clarence H. Clark, whose specialty was extra- 
illustrated or Grangerized books ; Ferdinand J. Dreer, who 
had made an unusual collection of autographs which he 
later gave to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania ; Horace 
Howard Furness, the celebrated Shakespearean scholar; 
and John Thomson. Furness, a kindly, genial and most 
attractive man, with a ruddy complexion, a little stout, who 
always carried an ear trumpet, the sort of man whom every- 
body likes, established a reputation for literary attainments 
which extended very far. What he did, however, was only 
to make a sort of catalogue of the labors of a very famous 
person, a task which can hardly be regarded as the creation 
of literature. In my view Charles R. Hildeburn did a 
much more important work of the same character in the 
preparation of his Issues of the Press of Pennsylvania and 
the sources of information were much more obscure. Dr. 
William Pepper became the first president of the club and 
at his death I succeeded him and I have been re-elected each 
year since. Its most important reproductions have been 
the Magna Charta of William Penn, and the Chronicles of 
Nathan Ben Saddi. I wrote the preface to two or three of 
its publications and have made one address upon some 
book topic to the club each year. 

About this period began the organization of patriotic 
societies, as they are called, composed of the descendants 
of those who participated in events of consequence in 
American history. 

I was one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Society 
Sons of the Revolution. The earliest president, William 
Wayne, a descendant of Anthony Wayne, who, in order 
that the name of Wayne might be maintained, changed his 
from Evans, was followed at his death by Richard M. 
Cadwalader, a descendant of Colonel Lambert Cadwalader, 
and a sweet-tempered, deaf and delightful gentleman, who 
has seven sons and who in his earlier years wrote a book 

239 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

upon ground rents. I have been vice-president of the 
Colonial Society and am a life member of the Society of 
Colonial Wars and a member of the Society of the War of 
1812. 

An exceedingly interesting society of this character, of 
which I have repeatedly been the president, is the Nether- 
lands Society of Philadelphia, before referred to. Its mem- 
bership is not so large as to be cumbersome and there are an 
intensity and fervor about the spirit manifested at their 
annual dinners on the 23d of January, the anniversary of the 
Convention of Utrecht in 1578, which I have found nowhere 
else. It is partly due to a real belief in the value of their 
Dutch ancestry and to the impressive music of the songs 
called forth in the struggle of Holland with Spain and of 
their own song of The Dutch on the Delaware. 

Among my friends in the city was Godfrey Keebler, a 
Swabian, who in his youth came to America and for a time 
worked on the place of my Grandfather Pennypacker. 
Later he went to Philadelphia and there prospered, doing a 
large business as a baker. He was president of the Cann- 
statter Volksfest Verein, and being active in all of the move- 
ments in which the Germans were interested, he had me 
invited to all of their festivities and balls and made me an 
honorary member of the ''Verein." It was through him 
that I was invited to deliver the address at the dedication of 
the Schiller Monument in Fairmount Park. He died in 1893. 

On the second of November of the same year the Art 
Club gave a reception to Joseph Jefferson which Mrs. Penny- 
packer and I attended. We found him the same genial 
personality on the floor which his acting indicated on the 
stage. It is doubtful whether any other actor ever awakened 
more kindly feeling for himself or greater admiration for his 
art. In Rip Van Winkle, Cricket on the Hearth, The Rivals 
and Lend Me Five Shillings he seemed to me to be perfect. 
It is a satisfaction to have seen the stage in these days of 
Jefferson and Booth when the intelligent analysis and pre- 
240 



PRESIDENT JUDGE 

sentation of character were depended upon to attract rather 
than the gaudiness of scenery or the legs of the ballet. 

On the 21st of December, I met the President, Benjamin 
Harrison, at The Union League and heard him make an 
address — a short man, pallid, precise, and with his wits 
about him, but he gave the impression of selfishness and of 
one who could feel that the Lord had intervened specially 
in his behalf. 

In 1894, Judge Fell went to the Supreme Court and for 
a year Theodore F. Jenkins took his place. Jenkins was a 
Democrat, who began his career as a boy in the Law Library, 
and who, turning his attention to the books he carried to the 
lawyers, became later a skilled lawyer himself and made a 
success in his profession. While he sat on the bench there 
came before us ''Melon Street," a novel and complicated 
land damage case, which before it was finally decided had 
the unique distinction of having been heard before seventeen 
judges, and another case, which I called my ''Slam-bang" 
case. The plaintiff stood on the platform of a railroad 
station ; about a hundred yards away the railroad crossed a 
public street. A woman, walking on the street at the 
crossing, was struck by the train and killed. The locomotive 
carried her body as far as the station and there, throwing it 
on the platform, struck the plaintiff with it and broke his 
leg. He brought suit for negligence. I entered a non-suit 
upon the ground that the consequence was too remote to be 
reasonably anticipated as a result of the alleged negligence. 
Both Judge Hare and Judge Jenkins were against me, but 
I stood my ground and was affirmed in the Supreme Court. 
There is no other case like it in legal annals. 

Judge Jenkins, being a Democrat, only remained on the 
bench for a year and, following the next election, was suc- 
ceeded by Mayer Sulzberger, a Republican. Sulzberger was 
a Jew, born up the Rhine in Germany, and holds high rank 
among his people over the world, being learned in letters 
and a strong influence. Small in stature, with shoulders 

16 241 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

slightly stooping, large head and a ready tongue, he is the 
only man I have ever met in my life who talks all of the time 
and who always talks well. Every sentence has something 
in it, keen and incisive as well as philosophical. At the bar 
he was rapidly closing up the gap, between John G. Johnson 
and himself for the leadership. He had a large practice, 
and by it had made a fortune. Why he was willing to leave 
it behind him and start upon another career has ever been 
something of a mystery. A learned and most able judge, 
his success has been somewhat qualified by the fact that he 
could never quite forget that he was no longer an advocate. 
A thoroughly good-hearted man, with much of the milk of 
human kindness overflowing in his soul, there was, never- 
theless, a remnant in him of that Eastern tyranny which 
is shown on the Assyrian monuments, where the successful 
heroes are seen gouging out the eyes of their foes. Saving 
for these limitations upon his practical usefulness, no greater 
or more capable judge ever sat on the bench. 

One day a young lawyer began to argue upon that most 
intricate and technical of subjects — the law of contingent 
remainders. He began in the middle, worked both ways 
with unwearied zeal, and kept it up for half an hour and 
perhaps longer. I sat there and blandly listened. After a 
while, Sulzberger arose from his seat and paced to and fro 
behind me with his hands hidden in the folds of his gown. 
Presently, unable to control himself longer, he came leaning 
over me and whispered: ''You damned hypocrite!" 

In 1894 my daughter Josephine and I made a trip to Cuba 
on the fruit steamer Braganza, built on the pattern of the 
Alabama, and on the way saw the island of San Salvador, 
or Cat Island, which was the first land found in America by 
Columbus. It did not look as though he had found very 
much of importance. We landed at Barragoa, a very old 
town on the eastern end of the island. A low wall ran 
around it once, intended for defense, but now broken down, 
and on top of the wall paced one solitary and forlorn-looking 
242 



PRESIDENT JUDGE 

sentry. The Spaniards throw the offal from the cattle killed 
into the sea and consequently the harbor was full of sharks. 
The town was dirty and dilapidated. Boys and girls, ten or 
twelve years of age, ran around stark naked. Women 
were uncovered above the waist. Countrymen rode into 
town astride of horses, mules, asses, bulls, cows, or anything 
mountable that they could find. A man would load his 
mule with lumber, the ends of the boards dragging behind, 
then throw two huge bags of merchandise over the mule's 
back, then get on top of the bags and ride to the mountains. 
Every step was attended by a flock of buzzards patiently 
awaiting the time when the man or the mule would topple 
over. Everything was open. I saw one man ride a cow 
into a store and up to the counter to make a purchase, and 
the storekeeper treated it as a matter of course until she 
dunged on the floor and then he complained. The sky 
would be perfectly clear, a few minutes later it would rain in 
torrents, and a few minutes later still it would be as clear as 
before. For amusement the Spaniards drank a sweet native 
wine and fought game cocks. An American named Matthew 
Craig had the only industry in the town, a factory where he 
employed a number of men and women and made oil from 
the nut of the cocoanut palm. He had acquired a small 
fortune, during the Spanish -American war a few years later, 
he lost it all and he died in Kensington, Philadelphia, in abso- 
lute poverty. Bananas and pineapples seemed to be the 
only products to be sold. The United States Government 
sent a cultivated young South Carolinian, recently married, 
to Barrayoa to act as consul. It was a sad and solitary 
place, and the consul and his wife seemed glad enough to see 
an American face. When the war came along, they were 
overlooked and forgotten and had a most uncomfortable 
experience. It was an interesting and novel sight to see the 
steamer being loaded with bananas. They were brought in 
little rowboats to the side of the vessel and the negroes 
formed in line tossing the bunches from one to another, 

243 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

singing with rhythm and time: "Uno, duo, trio, quadro, 
quinto." When the work was over they had a dance, 
playing on instruments made of a gourd with a stick through 
it and ornamented with carvings. I prevailed on one of the 
performers to sell to me two of the instruments. 

From Barragoa, we went to Mata and Yumuri, two 
other little ports in eastern Cuba to secure bananas. At 
the latter the Yumuri River, flowing from the mountains, 
empties into the sea. We went up this river for a mile or 
two in a rowboat. The limbs of the palm trees were covered 
with vines and mosses, the forests were a complete tangle, 
impenetrable except to one carrying a machete, and in the 
crevice of every rock left bare by the stream some plant had 
started to grow. We saw women washing clothing along the 
banks of the river and using for soap the juice of a plant. 
The wife of the agent of the fruit company at Yumuri 
invited us to breakfast. She could not talk a word of 
English. The dishes were all strange but palatable. The 
pigs ran around over the floor, but it must be remembered 
that the rooms were all open to the air. On the bottom of 
the cup from which I had drunk the coffee I found half a 
dozen drowned ants, but then it must likewise be remem- 
bered that Cuba is prolific of insects and it is, I suppose, 
impossible to be protected from them. Along the shore of 
the sea there was a refreshing sea breeze, but a few rods 
inland it was so hot as to be stifling. Josephine and I 
gathered sea shells and sea beans along the sands and a 
naked negro boy came out of a hut built of palm and roofed 
with palm leaves and brought us specimens which were 
beautiful. We left Cuba at midnight in the full of the 
moon, shouting ''buena noche" to those who rowed to the 
shore. On the way home the captain was bitten by a 
tarantula, and we enjoyed eating the little fig bananas 
(those on their way to market being contemptuously called 
plantains) and a species of pineapple vastly better than any 
of those offered for sale. 
244 



PRESIDENT JUDGE 

On the evening of November 1, 1894, Henry Watterson 
of Kentucky, one of the most famous journalists of 
the day, lectured in the Academy of Music. The 
Union League, of which I was then a member, gave 
him a dinner and several of us made speeches at him. 
He was rather a fierce looking little man wearing a big 
mustache, but as we got nearer to him we found him genial 
and companionable. 

On September 16, 1895, the courts of common pleas 
formally abandoned their former place of meeting at Sixth 
and Chestnut streets and moved to their rooms in the City 
Hall at Broad and Market streets. On invitation I made 
an address to the bench and the bar, after having thoroughly 
studied the associations connected with Congress Hall. 
This address was printed by a committee of the bar con- 
sisting of Edward Shippen, George Tucker Bispham, and 
Samuel Dickson. Up to that time, little attention had been 
given to the history of Congress Hall, but it then came into 
vogue. At one time the city offered it for sale, but the 
Colonial Dames took hold of the matter and with effort 
persuaded the city authorities to undertake its restoration. 
They and the architects depended upon my paper for their 
information and its effect was therefore helpful not only to 
the city but to the nation. When the building was re-opened 
in 1913, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, 
and Champ Clark, Speaker of the House of Representatives, 
were present on the invitation of Mayor Blankenburg, but 
they knew little about the subject and perhaps cared less, 
and the architect then told me that he had made his recon- 
struction, and the agent of the Associated Press told me he 
had prepared his report for the country, based upon the 
facts I had given them. The address was not only an his- 
torical investigation, but could be included among what 
the cataloguers of books call Facetice because of a reference 
it contains to General Henry Knox, unearthed from a 
contemporary description of him. Upon going to the City 

245 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Hall the judges put on the silk gowns which they have since 
worn when performing their duties. 

In 1895 my uncle, Joseph R. Whitaker, died. He was a 
bachelor about seventy-one years of age, masterful but 
good-hearted, who had a great influence upon my fortunes. 
He left property of the value of perhaps a million dollars, 
which, on his death, he distributed among his nieces and 
nephews and he made me one of his executors. Amid the 
vicissitudes of my later life among politicians, the fact that 
I had my own resom-ces on which to rely saved me from those 
intimations which are so often ruthlessly and recklessly 
made concerning those holding public office. 

The same year I became one of the vice presidents of 
the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the president of the 
Pennsylvania German Society and the vice president of 
the Colonial Society. 

One of the brightest retorts (in baseball language, 
"right off the bat") I have ever known occurred in the trial 
of a case before me about this time. The question was the 
right of an alleged political party to have a place on the 
printed ballot. John C. Bell, afterward Attorney General 
under Governor John K. Tener, represented the applicants, 
and James Gay Gordon, later a judge in No. 3 Court, repre- 
sented the opponents. Bell's client, a noisy, blatant fellow, 
told how he and two or three others had met on a Broad 
Street corner and concluded to organize the new party. 
Bell, when he came to the argument, explained this rather 
dubious beginning by saying that it often happened in 
nature that important matters had an insignificant origin, 
that the acorn became the mighty oak and the Amazon 
River, a hundred and fifty miles wide at its mouth, started 
in a little rill in the Andes Mountains. ** Yes, " said Gordon 
in reply, ''but this party began in a big mouth and ends in a 
little rill." 

In December, 1896, Judge Hare resigned from the Bench 
after a service of forty-five years and the effect of his with- 
246 



PRESIDENT JUDGE 

drawal was to make me President Judge of the Court. My 
commission was read and I assumed the duties December 
13th. One day Sulzberger and I sat in our room discussing 
the situation and we concluded when our advice should be 
asked to suggest the appointment of J. Martin Rommel, a 
capable young lawyer, as the third member of the court. 
A tap came upon the outside of the door. When it was 
opened in stepped Colonel Lewis E. Beitler, a tall person 
with a military air, who said : '' At the command of Governor 
Hastings I come to present his compliments and to inform 
you that he has concluded to appoint Mr. William W. 
Wiltbank to the vacancy in this court." And he did. 
Judge Wiltbank was a descendant of Bishop William White 
and of General William MacPherson of the Revolutionary 
Army. He had been an oiSicer in the War of the Rebellion. 
He had a considerable practice and had had long experience 
at the Bar, and he possessed a technical knowledge of the 
law as well as intelligence. His mental processes were a 
little prone to be stiff, prim and formal. He never would 
permit himself to precede me in going through a doorway. 
He was almost horrified when he found me sitting on a 
bootblack stand on the street having my boots blacked. 
He made an excellent judge and distinctly strengthened 
his professional reputation by going upon the bench. 

In 1897 I took my three daughters — Josephine Whitaker, 
Eliza Broomall and Anna Maria Whitaker — to Europe and 
we spent the most of the time in Holland and England. It 
is one of the comforts of my life that I have spent a month of 
it in Holland. The Englishman, with a capacity for organ- 
ization and a force of character which has made itself felt in 
the world, is a surly sort of creature and retains many of 
the original brutal instincts. This fact is shown in all of his 
dealings with weaker peoples. The Dutchman, while 
inheriting . from the same ancestry the strong traits of 
courage, tenacity and the willingness to surrender individual 
inclinations in order to combine with his fellows, has a 

247 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

leaven of good humor which is a great saving grace. In the 
EngUsh Channel a dense fog settled down over us. One 
morning I was on deck leaning over the rail toward the prow 
listening to the horns which appeared to be blowing in all 
directions around us. Suddenly there loomed up before 
me, out of the fog, not more than twenty or thirty feet 
away, the sharp nose of a steamer, the Maine, coming 
directly for the side of our vessel. The deck hands on both 
boats yelled aloud and ran to the far side of each in order 
to avoid the splinters. A collision seemed inevitable and 
ours was to be the steamer rammed. I hung over the rail, 
only anxious to see that it did not strike before passing the 
state-room of my Daughter Josephine, almost beneath me 
though a httle further toward the stern. 

When that point was passed I felt a sense of relief, 
though I was told my face was bloodless. The passengers 
who were about ran to get life preservers. By skilful sea- 
manship on both boats the officers and crews managed to 
keep them apart and the Maine swept by, almost grazing 
us. Then there was a mighty cheer on both boats. There 
was a timid lot of passengers for the rest of the trip. One 
man wore a life preserver the whole time and we all shall 
remember the Maine. 

At Antwerp our hotel was near the cathedral and its 
chimes rang every fifteen minutes through the night. We 
rode in a street car out to Hoboken, a village three or four 
miles inland. The car stopped on the way. I could see no 
passenger who wanted to get on the car or to alight from it. 
Thereupon the conductor got off and proceeded to urinate 
before us all in full view. The incident illustrates the 
different way in which these people look at some of the prob- 
lems of life. At Amsterdam we had rooms at the Hotel 
Amstel. The fields around the city are divided off, not by 
fences as with us at home, but by ditches filled with sea 
water, and there is but one entrance for the big black and 
white cattle which seem to be never hungry and always 
248 



PRESIDENT JUDGE 

lying down, and that is through a gate. One day Josephine, 
who is something of an artist, and I went through one of 
these gates in order to give her an advantageous location 
from which to make a sketch of a tower. She made her 
sketch. While we were so engrossed one of the farm boys 
locked the gate and we discovered that we were held as 
prisoners. I would have enjoyed caning the Dutch scamp, 
but instead I was compelled to pay a ransom while he and 
some companions laughed with glee. 

On another day my Brother Isaac and I went to Utrecht 
and there hunted up Jan Pannebakker,* a goldsmith and 
jeweler with whom I had corresponded. The earliest of the 
name of whom I have knowledge was burned to death by 
the Spaniards as a heretic at Utrecht in 1568, and these 
cheerful Christians likewise drowned his wife. We took 
Jan, whom we found to be an agreeable black-eyed man with 
a pleasant wife and a family of well-educated children, to 
Gorcum or Gorinchem with us in order to make some 
investigations and to see the church in one of whose windows 
the arms of the family at an early date had been painted 
upon glass. He did not know a word of English and such 
conversation as was maintained throughout the day had to 
be conducted in Dutch. We crossed the North Sea from 
Flushing to the mouth of the Thames and spent a week in 
London. While there we visited the British Museum with 
its immense collections of literature and art, and the Kew 
Gardens with their many varieties of flowers and shrubbery. 
We stood on London Bridge, rode on top of the omnibuses 
and saw again on the Strand the tangle caused by the vain 
effort of the Englishman to solve modern transportation by 
the extension of the old method of cab service. With all 
of his capacity, the Englishman is a little stiff in his mental 
joints and, therefore, slow in his movement. I saw outside 
of Coventry a woman, born in the house in which she lived, 
who had never seen the nearest village only three miles 

*He died in November, 1916. 

249 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

away. I found if I wanted a carriage from a liveryman the 
only safe course was to give an order the day before. In 
something of a hurry I went to a man at Coventry as I 
would have done at home and told him I wanted his carriage 
and driver. He began by feeding the horses, then he had 
them groomed, presently he brought out the carriage and 
had it washed and greased. After all of these preliminaries 
were completed and the horses stood there harnessed, I 
supposed we were ready to start. By no means. He then 
had to dress himself and put on that ugly long hat without 
which no man with a proper sense of his dignity would think 
of driving a team. My object was to go to Bosworth. It 
was fifteen miles away. No traveler had ever before asked 
to be driven to Bosworth, and he did not know the roads. 
I suggested that we might inquire as we went along and find 
them, adding that it was time for him to learn the way to a 
place so famous. Three or four miles from Coventry we 
turned a sharp corner, approaching the little village of Fenny 
Drayton. On the corner was a lot overgrown with weeds, 
in the center of which stood a stone. ''What does that stone 
mark?" I asked. ''I do not know," he replied. "Stop the 
coach and let me see." The inscription told me that on that 
spot stood the house in which George Fox, the founder of 
the Quakers, had been born. I had stumbled upon an 
interesting site, replete with associations of interest to a 
Pennsylvanian, and I felt repaid for the trip. We reached 
Bosworth after the noon meal, but learned that we were in 
Bosworth market town and still not at the battlefield. The 
driver objected to going any further. Among other incen- 
tives, one of my forefathers had been killed at Bosworth and 
I did not propose to get that near to the field without seeing 
it, so I insisted and told him to rest his horses for an hour and 
feed them. All that the tavern people could give us to eat 
was the remnant of a cold leg of lamb, and nothing could 
have been more palatable. While in England I cultivated 
an admiration for sheep from which I have never recovered. 
250 



PRESIDENT JUDGE 

After reaching the neighborhood of the battlefield I stopped 
at a rectory and the rector, an inteUigent gentleman, pointed 
out to me the way across two or three intervening fields. 
In a vale between low hills stood a rude monument of rough 
stone twenty feet high marking the spring where Richard III 
was killed to make way for another line of English kings. 

We crossed the ocean from Southampton to New York 
in the City of Paris. On board were Pillsbury, who had been 
Attorney General of Massachusetts; Rufus E. Shapley, the 
Philadelphia lawyer who wrote Solid for Mulhooly ; and the 
secretary of Chauncey M. Depew. We started in a storm 
so fierce that the seas swept over the upper decks and the 
hatchways had to be closed and the passengers locked below, 
much to their discomfort. At the international concert, 
whose programme was printed on the vessel, I presided and 
made an address. 

When I went to Europe at the beginning of the summer 
vacation all of the matters before the court had been dis- 
posed of except one and upon that we had reached a con- 
clusion and Sulzberger and Wiltbank promised that one of 
them would write the opinion. The Christian Science 
Church had applied for a charter. In addition to teaching 
certain theological tenets, they proposed to treat diseases 
through the instrumentality of "healers" who charged a 
fee for their services and advertised, seeking business. 
After discussion, all of the three judges were opposed to 
granting the charter for the reason that it would be in con- 
flict with those statutes which make it a criminal offense 
to practice medicine except after study and upon a certificate 
of the Board of Examiners. We determined to select some 
good lawyer, disinclined to overlook the technique of his 
profession, a little set and narrow, closely associated with 
some one of the orthodox churches, so as to be certain of an 
adverse report and refer the case to him as master. We all 
felt sure that Henry Budd was our man and we made the 
reference. After long and careful study and a full presenta- 

251 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

tion of the testimony, he filed a thorough-going report 
recommending that the charter be granted. Then there 
was a court in trouble. When I returned in the fall, I found 
the case just where it had been left, Sulzberger protesting 
that, since he was a Jew, if he had written the opinion it 
would have been commented upon unfavorably, and Wilt- 
bank, since he was known as a strict churchman, urging 
similar reasons. The matter ended in my writing an opinion 
overruling Budd and refusing the charter, and by such a 
series of mischance I secured a place in Christian Science 
literature. With the great growth in numbers of these 
people and with the respectability which comes in two or 
three generations after the accumulation of such fortunes as 
that of Mrs. Eddy, there promises to be a future in which 
I shall be regarded as a sort of nineteenth century Herod. 

It was also my fortune to decide one of the very early 
cases determining the rights of riders of the bicycle. The 
law is fixed that one approaching a railroad crossing must 
stop, look and listen. A man riding a bicycle came to a rail- 
road where a train was passing. He did not get off, but 
rode around in a circle until the train had passed and then 
crossed behind it. A train coming the other way killed 
him. His widow brought a suit against the railroad for 
damages, which was tried before me. I entered a non-suit 
and was sustained by the Supreme Court. The newspaper 
organ of the bicyclers, published in Boston, said there was 
great need of new blood on the bench, and that the judges 
were a lot of old short-sighted and bandy-legged fellows who 
could not ride a bicycle if they tried, and who had no con- 
ception of the principles which ought to be applied to its use. 

In March, 1898, Albert, who was the prospective heir to 
the throne of Belgium, made a tour incognito through the 
United States. He was a young man, neither tall nor short, 
neither slender nor stout, of no distinctive color or manner, 
and he made upon the beholder no very decided impression 
of any kind. I have already referred to the dinner which 
252 



PRESIDENT JUDGE 

was given to him at the Belle vue. At that time Henry J. 
McCarthy, one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas 
No. 3, had a method of after-dinner speaking which was very 
taking and altogether his own. He familiarized himself 
with the events in the careers of the classic heroes — Aga- 
memnon, Alexander, Csesar and the rest — and fitted them 
upon the men of everyday life in Philadelphia. Colonel 
Alexander P. Colesberry, a slightly made man, who gave 
no impression of strength, at that time United States 
Marshal, was at the dinner. McCarthy made a speech in 
which he drew a picture of Colesberry with the language 
and in the habiliments of Caesar stopping the riot raised 
by the recent railway strikers on Chestnut Street. Albert 
listened with amazement if not with interest. 

About this time, by a dispensation of the Most Worship- 
ful Grand Master of the Masons of Pennsylvania, I was 
made a Mason at sight; that is, the three degrees of a 
Master Mason were conferred at one time, which is regarded 
as a great Mas©nic honor and has been accorded to but eight 
or ten men in the state. Among them were included John 
Wanamaker, James Gay Gordon and Charles Emory Smith. 

In 1897 Philadelphia sought to issue a loan of $11,200,000. 
Some citizens, represented by Alexander Simpson, Jr., filed 
a bill in equity in No. 2 Court to prevent the transaction. 
I wrote an opinion dismissing the bill and on appeal to the 
Supreme Court the judgment was affirmed. 

On the 3d of March, 1899, my mother died in her eighty- 
fourth year, one of a series of events occurring about that 
period which changed the whole tenor of my life. Since 
the time of my birth we had been together almost con- 
tinuously. The early death of my father led to a relation 
between us never interrupted which was more than that of 
mother and son. The same year, June 17th, the Sons of the 
Revolution made a pilgrimage to Pennypacker's Mills 
on the Perkiomen, where I made an address to them. Peter 
Pennypacker bought 515 acres at this place in 1747 and 

253 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

there had a grist mill, saw mill, fulling mill and probably a 
country store. It was the terminus of the Skippack Road, 
and is referred to in William Bradford's little book published 
in 1754 as one of the noted places in the province. Wash- 
ington took the Continental Army there September 26, 1777, 
and there held the council of war which determined to 
fight the Battle of Germantown. After the battle he 
retreated to the same camp, bringing with him his wounded 
men. Since the time of its purchase by Peter, the property 
had never been out of the family. 

In the fall of 1899 I was nominated by all parties and 
elected to another term of ten years upon the bench. Said 
the Evening Bulletin editorially: ''The renomination of 
Judge Pennypacker assures the continuance on the bench 
for another term of one of the most trusted and sagacious 
of the common pleas judges. Although among the unosten- 
tatious members of the judiciary, Judge Pennypacker's 
clear-headed, industrious, wise and faithful performance of 
his duty has long ago earned for him the confidence of all 
who have occasion either to participate in or to observe the 
business of the courts." 

As events happened very soon afterward, it did no 
assure anything of the kind and the play of larger forces 
gave a very different phase to my career. 

The same year Governor William A. Stone appointed 
me a member of the Valley Forge Park Commission. The 
state had undertaken some years before to secure the 
grounds of the camp at Valley Forge and preserve them, 
but not very much progress had been made. Francis M. 
Brooke, who was at the head of the commission, was very 
earnest and zealous, but his energy often provoked antag- 
onism. A. Harry Bowen, the superintendent, was a most 
efficient person and much credit is due him, but it is difficult 
to overcome the indifference of distant legislators to such 
movements, and the appropriations were too limited to 
permit much progress. I took the place of John Cadwalader, 
254 



PRESIDENT JUDGE 

declining to accept it, however, until assured by him that 
it was his purpose to retire. 

The efforts of the burghers of South Africa to protect 
their homes against the aggressions of the strongest empire 
of the world seeking to get possession of their gold and 
diamond mines appealed to me strongly. Cecil Rhodes and 
Dr. Jamieson represented the ordinary type of adventurers, 
always to be found on the outskirts of civilization, ready to 
run the risk of hanging in order to take the chance of seizing 
what does not belong to them. In my opinion, no man 
who has been minister to a foreign court, especially to 
England, which is our natural rival and in time of stress has 
always been our foe, ought to be permitted to be Secretary 
of State of the United States. John Hay, who is generally 
much lauded for diplomacy and whom I should like to 
approve, because of his literary attainments and because he 
wrote to me some kindly letters and spoke pleasantly of me 
in his Life of Lincoln, should never have held that responsible 
position. The meanest thing in American annals is the 
fact that we aided the British Empire to crush a little 
republic by sending our mules and supplies. One of the 
greatest mistakes we have ever made was in throwing our 
sympathies and moral support to Japan in her war with 
Russia. The latter country had been our friend in the War 
of 1812, during the Rebellion and when she sold us Alaska. 
The merest tyro ought to have been able to see that with our 
ownership of the Philippines and our Pacific Coast, a 
struggle with Japan is in the future inevitable. Both of 
these blunders were due to the fact that John Hay used his 
potent influence in behalf of England. Some years ago it 
was my fortune to see at a bookbinder's the letters and 
invitations with which he was coddled by the king and 
nobility of London and which he was having bound in 
crushed levant for his posterity to admire. Very few men 
are strong enough to resist such blandishments. I wrote 
three letters upon the Boer War for the New York Sun. 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

They were reproduced by W. T. Stead in London and else- 
where in England, in Australia, and were translated into 
German, Dutch and the other European languages. They 
are too long for insertion here, but the following which I 
published at the time is in the same spirit : 

The South African War 
It is all very simple. The tale needs but few words for the 
telling. The British made up their minds to steal the Transvaal, 
with its wealth of gold guarded only by herdsmen. The event 
shows that they were strong enough to steal the Transvaal, and 
they have stolen the Transvaal. Joan of Arc was burned in the 
market place of Rouen and she is dead. There are some lessons 
to be learned from the struggle. That for the British is that, when 
they go marauding after a puny prey they should grasp it, not 
with hundreds under a Jamieson, but with hundreds of thousands 
imder a Roberts. The lesson for ourselves is one of ineffable 
meanness. Never before, since July 4, 1776, did this nation sit by 
with arms folded and mouth closed and see a great empire strangle 
a Uttle republic, encouraging on the sly the empire — the same 
empire which took advantage of our stress and made money by 
sailing under false colors to drive our commerce off the seas. 
The glory of the war is all with the Boers, who have lost every- 
thing but saved their manhood. The lesson for the world is one of 
hope. There is still a people in it with pluck enough to resist 
sordid wrong, regardless of consequence. It is well to know that 
the highest examples of patriotism in the past are equaled in the 
present and may appear again in the future. The boy who killed 
Ross, after the burning of the Capitol at Washington, set a note 
for mankind, though he lost his life, and organized greed may 
hereafter hesitate when it reflects that the road to Pretoria was 
sprinkled with the blood of forty thousand Englishmen, and that 
the profits of the coveted Rand for a quarter of a century and until 
Cecil Rhodes shall be dead, have been dissipated. Oom Paul 
takes his place, not in a niche in the Transvaal, but alongside of 
Leonidas and Winkelried, of Wallace and William of Orange, 
among the heroes of all time and the whole world, to incite the 
brave to effort for the ages yet to come. When the English nation, 
old and toothless, like the giant in the Pilgrim's Progress, sits by 
the wayside snarling over the memories of its victories won from 
the weak in Ireland and India, at Wyoming and St. Helena, with 
every traveler ready to knock it on the head for its past wicked- 
256 



PRESIDENT JUDGE 

ness, mothers will tell their children, poets will sing the story, and 
historians will write in their pages, how the burghers fought and 
died upon the kopjes of South Africa to save their homes. 

On the 19th of May, 1900, I was elected president of the 
Historical Society of Pennsylvania. This venerable institu- 
tion is the strongest in the United States devoted to its 
line of investigation and possesses volumes and manuscripts 
worth two or three millions of dollars. The papers which 
tell the story of Pennsylvania are within its walls. I had a 
long line of distinguished predecessors — William Rawie, 
Peter S. Du Ponceau, Thomas Sergeant, Joseph R. Ingersoll, 
John William Wallace, Brinton Coxe and Charles J. Still6. 

In 1901 Judge Charles B. McMichael sat with me in the 
License Court. He was a cultivated person who read Latin 
books for entertainment and, like all the McMichaels, was 
handsome. We granted very few more licenses than we 
found already in existence. One outcome of the session was 
the printing, only thirty copies however, of a little volume of 
reports of the cases as they came along, which I wrote while 
in the court. 

REPORTS OF CASES IN THE PHILADELPHIA 
LICENSE COURT OF 1901 

In curia currente calamo scribentur 
Dramatis Personce 
Judges Pennypacker and McMichael. 

Weber, an old German who, after leaving the saloon of Celia B. 
Gilbert, at 11 p. m., fell and fractured his skull, from the effects of 
which he died. 

Noyes, Carter and Brownley, detectives of the law and Order 
Society, who ferret out speak easies and bawdy houses, and 
applicants for license — German, Italian, Irish and the like — 
innumerable. 

"License they mean when they cry liberty" — Milton. 

"There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by 
which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern." 
— Dr. Johnson, 

17 257 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Ik moet, zeid' dat oudt Manneken, 
Noch drinken ens een Kanneken, 
Ik moet, zeid' dat oudt Manneken, 
Noch eensjes vrolijh zijn 

Drink Liedt of 1655. 

1 Application of Celia B. Gilbert, No. 1988. 

Ach Weber! Ach Weber! 
Was nun ist geschehen? 
Die Fusse, sie wardeln 
Sie Konnen nicht stehen, 
Durch die Jagen und Wochen 
Der Kopf ist gebrochen. 

2 Celia B. Gilbert, No. 1988 

Mon cher ami 

J'entend un cri 

Der Weber ist gefallen 

Les hommes courirent, 

Les femmes soupirent, 

Und laut die schreie schallen. 

3 Vincent Tontorello, No. 22 

If French you be, 

II fait un bruit 

But when in accents loud and clear 

He tells of Tontorello's beer 

The story cloys 

'Tis only Noyes. 

4 Nicholas Pessalano, No. 32 

And now there comes an end to Pessalano's joys. 

When a Law and Order Agent gets his bottles and an Noyes. 

5 Peter Finlan, No. 2^8 

What curious thing is this we hear, 
When Carter swears that Finlan's beer 
Is ladled out (by a man) with one ear. 

6 Philip Engelke, No. 265 

Though small and scarce the angels be 
McMichael finds an Engel-ke 
Though fortune tap but once in a cycle 
She scatters her favors before McMichael. 

258 



PRESIDENT JUDGE 

7 Generoso DVdlesandro 

Oh! ho! 

Generoso 

D'Allesandro, 

Must it ever go so? 

Speak it easy all the land thro' 

Speak it easy when you tell her 

Of the bottles in the cellar. 

8 August M. Finkbeiner, No. 319 

Oh Finkbeiner! 

Oh Finkbeiner! 

What is finer, 

Or diviner 

Than Milwaukee beer? 

But when seen 

On table green, 

With slot machine, 

Froth and flavor disappear. 

9 George Dokenwadel, No. 379 

Dokenwadel 
Was fur ein twaddle 
Abouta"boddle"? 
When you sell it 
Why not tell it? 

10 Arnholt & Schaefer Brewing Co., A^o. 400 

Policy men and toughs 

Gamblers, bawds and roughs. 

Abide in Sansom Street 

And in speak easies meet. 

But when Carter, Noyes and Brownley greet 

Throw down their money and offer treat, 

'Tis necessary to be discreet. 

11 Frederick W. Wolf, No. 426 (A bottler who sold beer to the 

Kensington Athletic Club, No. 3643 Market Street). 
On the Kensington sward 
In the Twenty-fourth ward 
Are trained athle — tes. 
They stride from afar 
Cling close to the bar 
And swift run into diabetes. 

259 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

12 The cultured hut weary McMichael cantat. 
Hold ! enough ! 
Ich hab genug; 
Assez 
J'en ai! 

I hope and pray 
You will away 
Mucho no sano 
Poco es bueno; 
Nunc satis est, 
Give us a rest 
Life is short. 
{To the crier) 
Adjourn the Court! 

{Exeunt omnes.) 

During this year there appeared in the Atlantic Monthly 
a paper upon The Ills of Pennsylvania. It was published 
anonymously and was sufficiently dull and stupid, but it 
gratified the instincts of the people of a state more in debt 
and, therefore, more mismanaged than any other in the 
country. The paper in its contents set forth that it was 
written by a Pennsylvanian, which, of course, gave its con- 
fessions of iniquity an added zest. I have since learned, 
however, that it was really written by Mark Sullivan, the 
son of an immigrant from Ireland, who, after hving a short 
time in Chester County, went away to seek his fortune and 
became the editor of Collier's Weekly. Indignant that the 
Atlantic Monthly should do anything so indecent, I wrote a 
historical parallel upon Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, 
pointing out the great comparative importance of the former 
in American affairs. It was published in many shapes and 
I really believe had an influence in giving me a representative 
position among the people of the state. 



260 



CHAPTER X 

Governor, 1903 

AT the opening of the year 1902 my lifea ppeared to 
be fixed in certain well-defined grooves and my 
future to be assured along lines of advancement 
entirely satisfactory and agreeable. 

I was president judge of what was regarded as the 
strongest court in the city, my services were acceptable 
to the bar and the community, I had recently been elected 
for a further term of ten years, and it was generally believed 
by both lawyers and politicians that upon the occurrence of 
the next vacancy, I would be sent to the Supreme Court. 

From the estates of my Uncle Joseph and my mother 
I had received about fifty thousand dollars, and I had also a 
share of my uncle's inheritance, from which, some years 
before his death, he had distributed, in accordance with his 
view that while he was free to bestow his own accumulations 
as he saw fit, inherited money was in the nature of a trust 
fund to be divided without favor among members of the 
family. 

Having always lived within my income, I was entirely 
out of debt. I had a house in town and had recently bought 
the historic home of the family, which had been in its 
possession for one hundred and fifty years, and there I 
intended to spend my summers. I owned a library of over 
ten thousand volumes of Americana especially relating to 
Pennsylvania, which in some respects was unequaled in the 
world. 

I was president of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania 
and a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, and these 
were to be the diversions and activities outside of my pro- 

261 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

fessional work. In a twinkling, within a period covering a 
few weeks of time, all of these conditions, plans and purposes 
were cast into the rubbish heap and I was out upon the 
broader sea of public affairs. As an illustration of how far 
was I from thinking of such a career, it may be told that just 
at this most inappropriate time I resigned my membership 
in The Union League, which I had held for fifteen years, 
upon the theory that it meant nothing in the pursuits of my 
life and was an unnecessary expense. 

A long time ago, in the Far East, in the land where the 
Bulbul sings and the roses bloom and scatter fragrance, 
the soothsayers gave warning that upon a certain morning 
the man who was the first to see the sun rise in its glory 
was destined to be king. Upon that day all of the people 
gathered upon the plain and each man with neck stretched 
and eyes fixed upon the far East, intent and eager, watched 
to catch the first glimpse of the coming dawn. But there 
was one among them who, too proud and indifferent to enter 
into the contest, turned his back upon the sun and fastened 
his eyes upon the mountain tops of the far West where 
stood the hut in which he was born, and behold! when the 
sun rose its earliest rays glinted along these peaks and he 
was the man of destiny who first caught the light. It is a 
true story. Men never secure the great rewards of life 
through eagerness. Fortune, like a woman, despises those 
who crouch at her feet. Clay, Webster and Blaine hunted 
the presidency with great ability and unwearied zeal, only 
to fail. The only man who ever set about to get it, sacrificing 
old friendships and present duties in his thirst, who met with 
success, was Woodrow Wilson, and the fact that he reached 
it was due to entirely different causes. Chief Justice Edwin 
M. Paxson besought the politicians to let him have the 
Governorship of Pennsylvania as a climax to his career, and 
found their hearts hardened against him. Jonah V. Thomp- 
son, reputed to be worth thirty millions of dollars, hoped 
that the weight of wealth would secure it. John P. Elkin 
262 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

sought it as the reward for long and efficient poUtical service. 
In each case the effort was a dreary waste. It came to me 
without the hfting of a finger, the expenditure of a dime or 
the utterance of a sigh. 

It would be the expression of a superficial thought to 
say that this outcome was the result of accident. In the 
play of forces and the working of the laws of nature there 
is no such thing as accident. Men are like the trees. Many 
of them perish early, but if they once get rooted in the 
ground, then they grow. Men gather strength and facility 
by that which they do, and if a man can do anything well 
he is presently in demand. To every man certain oppor- 
tunities come in the course of his life. Fortune occasionally 
knocks at his door. The difference in men is that some 
see and listen, and to others, failing to heed, she comes no 
more. I was a judge, but something more than a judge. I 
bore a part in the affairs of the city and the state beyond 
the performance of my mere professional duties. Through 
the years I had been slowly collecting the out-of-the-way 
books relating to the state and these gave me information 
which other men did not possess, utilized in papers and 
addresses until I had come to be a representative and even 
a champion of its cause in literature and history. For 
instance, July 16, 1902, the State of New York dedicated 
its State Park at Stony Point and invited me to deliver the 
oration. It was a hot day, there was a great crowd with 
much noise, a sufficiently long programme, in the course of 
which Governor Odell made an impromptu address, and as 
a result my formal paper was not listened to with eagerness, 
but it was a careful study of the event and of Wayne's 
relation to it and it has had a permanent effect. And now 
the time had come when the politicians of the state in an 
emergency needed a man of a type different from that of the 
ordinary partisan. The politician, upon the whole, does 
his work on a somewhat higher plane and with a little more 
regard for its appearance than does the business or pro- 

263 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

fessional man. This is not due to the fact that he is of 
a different mold from his fellows, but is because his work 
is done in the face of the public, with all eyes fastened upon 
it and, therefore, his interest requires him to be more careful. 
When the successful man in business trains up assistants 
who under his supervision learn the methods and become 
familiar with the custom, he always runs the risk of their 
going off for themselves and carrying the trade with them. 
In a greater degree the same danger confronts the successful 
party leader. There are ever around him ambitious men 
watchful to seize the power which he wields. Quay had 
long been in control and was growing old. John P. Elkin of 
Indiana County had been in Harrisburg through several 
administrations and had been assistant attorney general 
and then attorney general under Governor William A. 
Stone — a capable lawyer, an eloquent speaker, an affable 
gentleman ; he had participated in many political campaigns 
and was known and popular all over the state. He had the 
state administration behind him and he proposed to be the 
next governor. His success would have meant the beginning 
of another regime and the bones of the old leaders would 
have been scattered along the plains. Quay accepted what 
was in effect a challenge, told Elkin definitely that he could 
not be the governor and sought for an available candidate 
against wh(3m nothing could be said and who could appeal 
to popular support. Philander C. Knox, of Pittsburgh, and 
Charles Emory Smith, the editor of the Press, who had been 
Minister to Russia and Postmaster General, were under 
consideration. General John R. Brooke, who had fought at 
Gettysburg and later had commanded our forces in Porto 
Rico, came pretty close to selection. One evening David 
H. Lane, representing the organization of the Republican 
party, came up to my house. Lane is a remarkable man. 
Slight in frame, sandy in complexion, with a face of the 
Shakespearean type, he is very much of a philosopher and 
has often been called the brains of the party in Philadelphia, 
264 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

and is conceded by all to be one of its most astute leaders. 
As a plenipotentiary he tendered to me the nomination. I 
told him that my means were limited and that I had no 
money to spend, that my ambitions ran in an entirely differ- 
ent direction, and that to accept would be at the sacrifice 
of pretty much all that I myself wanted to do. He went 
further and pledged to me the first vacancy in the Supreme 
Court which should occur after my term as governor should 
be concluded. As a result of this interview, and at his 
request, I saw Quay a day or two later at the Republican 
headquarters, in the presence of Senator Penrose and W. R. 
Andrews. Quay and I sat together on a sofa and he asked : 

"What have you concluded to do?" 

"If this means that I am expected to put a lot of money 
into the campaign, I decline. What property I have I must 
endeavor to keep for my children." 

"You will not be called upon to spend one cent." 

"Senator, you have time and again indicated a kindly 
interest in my welfare, what would you advise me to do?" 

This was an appeal to his friendship at a time when he 
was attending to business. 

"You will have to determine that question entirely from 
your own point of view. I can give you no advice." 

Nothing could have been more true to correct principles 
or have indicated a nicer sense of propriety. He would not 
take the responsibility of leading me into what might have 
resulted in disaster, by the slightest suggestion. Then I 
said: 

"I accept, and will take the chances." 

He, on the instant, turned to Andrews and ordered: 

"Now get to work at once. Write to (naming certain 
persons) and tell them the candidate will be Pennypacker." 

A few months later I received from the party treasurer 
a receipt for $5,000 as my contribution to the expenses of 
the campaign. Surprised at the form the promise given me, 
and kept with absolute faith from beginning to end, had 

265 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

taken, I went to Quay and inquired, showing him the 
receipt : 

"Where did this money come from?" 

"Since it has been paid and since you did not pay it, 
I do not see that the matter need concern you in any way." 

I never received the shghtest explanation, intimation 
or even hint as to its source. 

The motives which led to acceptance were blended. I 
knew well that there was the certainty of much discomfort 
and of financial loss. Even if nominated and elected, the 
office could be held for but four years and I was giving up 
for it an assured future. But I had a strong desire to test 
myself, to see what I could do upon a broad field in a place 
of real serious importance. I had the knowledge that two 
of the family had before been talked about for the governor- 
ship — Elijah F. and Galusha — and the feeling that to have 
one of us reach the head of the state would be the gratifica- 
tion of a pride. Above all was the sober and conscientious 
thought that Pennsylvania in achievement was above every 
other state and that when she called any man it was his duty, 
no matter what might be his inclinations or pursuits, to 
drop them like the wedding guest in the Ancient Mariner 
and obey. And : 

He either fears his fate too much, 

Or his deserts are small, 
Who dares not put it to the touch 

To win or lose it all. 

There was a severe contest over the nomination, Elkin 
showing much strength, pluck and determination, in which 
I had no part or parcel. One of the men upon whom Elkin 
relied was Frank M. Fuller of Union town in Fayette County, 
and Elkin sent him the money with which to carry the 
county. Fuller decided to support Quay and asked the 
Senator whether he should return the money which had been 
received. 
266 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

"No," said Quay. "If you return that money Elkin 
will use it somewhere else against me. You deposit it in 
your name in a trust company and get three per cent interest. 
After the campaign is over Elkin is sure to be dead broke. 
Then you give him that money. He will be glad and you 
will help him and me too." 

There was a stormy time at the convention in June. 
Louis A. Watres, a wealthy man living in Scran ton, who had 
been lieutenant governor, was also a candidate with 
twenty-six delegates. His role was that of a dark horse, 
but he turned his delegates over to Quay on the first ballot. 
I had two hundred and six votes and Elkin one hundred and 
fifty-two. The delegates sang their coarse improvised song: 

Sit down, you beggars, sit down, 
Elkin will have his say 
But not to-day; 

Sit down, you beggars, sit down, 
One, two, three, four. 
Who in hell are we for? 
Pennypacker, Pennypacker, 
Pennypacker, Pennypacker. 

It was all over and the old political warrior had won 
what he declared to be at the time, and what proved to be, 
his last battle. A telegram informing me of the result was 
handed me while sitting in the trial of a case in the quarter 
sessions court just as I was about to charge the jury. A 
newspaper the next morning reported : 

The case was a long and tedious one, involving several com- 
plex questions in law and requiring careful attention to uninterest- 
ing facts and statistics. In his charge to the jury Judge Penny- 
packer reviewed the evidence at length. He did not omit an 
important feature of the evidence and even took occasion to 
clarify some of the less important testimony. His statement of 
the law was not only satisfactory to both sides, but his language 
was as clear and terse as the rhetoric of the text-books. 

267 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Just at this juncture appeared General George Weedon's 
Orderly Book, kept during the Revolutionary War, which I 
had undertaken to supervise and annotate for the American 
Philosophical Society and which was published by Dodd, 
Mead & Co., of New York. It gives the most complete 
record we have of the campaign of 1777 for the possession of 
Philadelphia. The publishers expected little demand for a 
book of interest only to scholarly investigators and they were 
much surprised to find that their whole edition was sold in 
a comparatively brief time. 

Within a few days after the nomination, at the request 
of Mr. Charles W. Henry, I delivered an address at the 
dedication of the statue to Teedyuscung, the Indian chief, 
erected on the Wissahickon. 

Robert E. Pattison became the Democratic candidate for 
the governorship. He had twice before been elected gover- 
nor, had the prestige of unusual success in a Republican 
state, and was ready to tempt fortune for the third time. 
He was a man inspired by worthy motives, with rather 
limited views of life, possessed of respectable attainments, 
who had come within sight of the Democratic nomination 
for the presidency and who, if he could win in this campaign, 
might well cherish such prospects. 

On the 1st of August I resigned from the bench in order 
to go upon the stump. This left me without a salary for 
about eight months, and for the first time in my life I was 
under the necessity of borrowing money in order to pro- 
vide for family needs. The beginning of the introduction 
into the service of the public was likewise the beginning 
of the sacrifice of personal comfort. Along with Senator 
Penrose, I spoke August 20th at Fogelsville in Lehigh 
County, not far from Allentown, and there, in a sense, the 
campaign was opened. For the next two and a half months 
my only occupation was that of following out the itinerary 
prepared by the campaign committee, and making speeches, 
oftentimes three in the course of the day. Without much 
268 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

regard for the physical capabihties of those taking part, the 
itinerary was arranged so as to provide for much of the 
travehng by night. The changes were so sudden and con- 
tinual that nothing made a distinct impression. The crowds 
were pretty much alike, made up of the same kind of faces 
and shouting the same shouts. One of the serious annoy- 
ances was, that on getting off the train at a station, the 
assembled partisans, loud and enthusiastic, all wanted to 
shake hands, and while this proceeding was in progress, 
some one, whom I did not know, would grab my valise and 
make off with it, and what was to become of it I never could 
tell. Generally he soon wearied and put it in some corner. 
Governor Hastings, who gave me a reception at Bellefonte, 
said to me: "If you do not get a private car and have your 
doctor with you, you will break down before you get half 
the way through." He had pursued that policy and, 
though a powerfully constituted man, his voice failed and 
he had to quit. While those who were with me occasionally 
withdrew for repairs, I was able to keep it up to the end, 
and on the last day made three speeches. My explanation 
of the fact was that, after speaking in the evening I insisted 
upon going around to the hotel and up the stairs into my 
room to bed and positively refused to go into the bar-rooms. 
Sometimes I was called a crank, but my night's sleep was 
saved. 

I wrote no speeches, made a different speech at each 
place, often suggested by the surroundings, and depended 
upon trying to think straight and telling the people exactly 
what I thought. This was relieved to some extent by the 
adaptation of a store of anecdotes. One illustration was 
used often and generally with good effect. It was the 
season of the year when the katydids were singing in the 
woods. Pattison had a stereotyped speech which he had 
committed to memory, telling of the many ills which had 
befallen the state under Republican rule. I likened the 
Democrat to the katydid. There never was any Katie — 

269 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

she never did anything, and yet this absurd insect, year 
in and year out, kept repeating the same old song. Strong 
of voice and short of ballast, it retired with the frosts of 
November, i. e., the elections, but was sure to return with 
the next campaign. 

At Pittsburgh there had been much dissatisfaction with 
a recent act which deprived the mayor, who had been elected, 
of his office and changed the form of government — in popular 
parlance called The Ripper Bill. On the train from Erie to 
Pittsburgh to attend a great meeting there. Senator Penrose 
said to me : 

''I hope you will not say anything about the Ripper Bill." 

"Senator," I answered, "that is the very subject about 
which I propose to talk to them." 

And I did, denouncing its policy, and I won what he 
conceded to be a success. I made not a single promise of 
any kind, either to an individual or to the public, and told 
the people wherever I went that I did not know whether I 
would make a good governor or not, that they would have 
to run the risk and take the responsibility, but that if elected, 
I should endeavor always to look solely to the welfare of the 
state. Quay made to me only one suggestion with regard 
to the future. Alexander J. Cassatt, president of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad Company, was very much interested 
in horse-racing and improving the breed of horses. Prac- 
tically a race-track could only be maintained if betting upon 
the horses should be permitted. The Senator asked me from 
Cassatt whether I would favor the passage of such a law. 
I replied : 

"Senator, I am not sure that gambling is essentially a 
crime. If you choose to introduce an act which abolishes 
our laws against gambling, I will carefully consider the 
question. But, remember, that permits the negro to shoot 
craps. I think it would be a mistake to allow betting on 
horses and not on craps." 

I heard no more of the subject. 
270 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

Those who accompanied me during the greater part of 
the time were WiUiam M. Brown, of New Castle, the candi- 
date for Heutenant governor; WilHam I. Schaffer, a leading 
lawyer of Chester and state reporter, and Colonel Ned 
Arden Flood, of Meadville. Brown, a short man with 
intense eyes, had all the look of a pirate, especially after he 
had examined the bottom of a glass, as he sometimes did, 
but he had many merits and I grew to be quite fond of him. 
He could hold his own in a scrap with great quickness and 
pertinacity. It is told of him that once in early youth 
with no prospects before him, he went into a gambling house, 
ventured his stakes and won $5,000. This sum was said to 
have been the foundation of his fortune and he never went 
near a gambling house again, which shows his good sense. 
He now had money and lived in a large and well-appointed 
house and I am told he has since become very rich. Schaffer 
and Flood were both orators of much power, but using very 
different methods. 

Among my literary friends. Dr. S. Weir Mitchell favored 
my election and Henry C. Lea thought that it would only 
be a prolongation of existing iniquity. 

One of the last speeches was at Norristown, October 
30th, in which I said : 

I have never sought the office of Governor of Pennsylvania. 
I do not seek it now; I have asked no man in this state to vote for 
me. I do not ask you to vote for me. The responsibility of this 
election rests upon you. Should I be elected next Tuesday, then 
without any sense of elation, with an appreciation of the great 
confidence you have resposed in me, I shall accept that high 
office which I regard as one of the highest upon the face of the 
earth because it is the highest executive office in the greatest of 
the American commonwealths, and I shall go forward to the per- 
formance of my duties with a sense of responsibility and with a 
determination to perform those duties to the very utmost of my 
abilities. 

Roosevelt announced from Washington that my defeat 
would be "a national calamity." 

271 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Charles Emory Smith followed suit with the statement 
that I was ''the ablest, truest and bravest candidate for 
governor that has been nominated in Pennsylvania in a 
quarter of a century." 

The day before election Quay, who had himself been 
state chairman and conducted the contest, gave out to the 
public his calculation that I would have a majority in the 
state of 163,435 votes. The official returns, later tabulated, 
showed that my majority over Pattison was 142,350 and 
that I had polled 593,328 votes, the largest number ever 
given to a candidate for governor in this state down to the 
present time (1914). There was much jubilation and some 
serious thought over the result within the state and it may 
be added, incidentally, that it gratified Com Paul Kruger, 
who spoke warmly upon the subject, and many people in 
Ireland and Holland, in which countries there was con- 
siderable comment. 

At my house for the next two months I held an almost 
continuous reception of persons, who wanted to fill the 
places under the control of the administration, and their 
friends. Among the very first was Charles Emory Smith, 
who came to urge that I appoint his friend. Captain John C. 
Delaney, factory inspector. James M. Shumaker came 
with a delegation from Johnstown asking to be appointed 
superintendent of grounds and buildings, and the result of 
a long and sifting cross-examination was that he pleased me 
very much, and I never saw any reason later to change the 
impression he then gave. A young man named H. A. Surface 
came to see me every few days. He had no political support 
whatever, but he made up for it in zeal. 

There was an office on ''the Hill " which had the imposing 
designation of "Economic Zoologist." It was filled by 
George Hutchinson, a hale, stout, agreeable fellow from the 
western part of the state who could hardly tell a cricket 
from a grasshopper, but who knew right well every voter in 
his township and how to bring him along. Surface wanted 
2/2 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

his place. Surface had edited an entomological magazine 
and was teaching in one of the colleges, but he had the idea 
that a great work could be done to help the farmers, fruit 
growers and bee culturists of the state. Later I appointed 
him and he certainly made a success of his bureau. Like 
all enthusiasts, however, he could see nothing else and 
during my whole term he kept me busy getting him out of 
the scrapes into which his zeal had led him, and preventing 
the politicians from eating him up. At one time the North 
American newspaper got a number of other papers to help 
and set a trap to ruin him, but I succeeded in thwarting it. 
He is still in his place and has done much to advance a 
scientific knowledge of insects and to prevent their depre- 
dations. Hutchinson, who was of little use as a clerk, floated 
from one department to another and was finally handed 
back to Surface. One night when Surface was preparing for 
the St. Louis Exposition a friend met Hutchinson about 
eleven o'clock looking very doleful. 

''What is the matter?" inquired the friend. 

"Do you know what that damned man has had 
me at?" he replied, "I have been down there skinning 
skunks." 

I listened to Quay about the heads of departments and 
ever found him sensible, conciliatory and anxious for my 
comfort and success as well as his own. After talking the 
matter over with Penrose, Durham and probably others, his 
suggestions to me were to appoint I. W. Griest of Lancaster, 
Secretary of the Commonwealth; William B. Rogers of 
Pittsburgh, Attorney General; Robert McAfee, of Alle- 
gheny, Banking Commissioner; and to retain Israel W. 
Durham as Insurance Commissioner and Thomas J. Stewart 
as Adjutant General. I told him I had thought carefully 
over the matter and had concluded to ask Hampton L. 
Carson to be the attorney general, and I told him frankly 
the reason, among others, that such an appointment would 
give color to the whole administration. 

18 273 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

"Do you know that he was counsel against me in the 
United States Senate?" 

"Yes, I do. But, after all, he was only counsel. He 
is a true-hearted man and will be as faithful as steel. You 
and I can both depend upon him and that means much." 

Penrose, Durham and George T. Oliver all came to me to 
protest, the last named leaving me with the statement that 
he felt sure I would agree with them and select Rogers. 
Finally Quay said to me : 

"Do you feel that you are able to give assurance for 
Carson?" 

"Entirely." 

"Well then, that will make other changes necessary. 
Fuller ought to be Secretary of the Commonwealth." I 
assented. Then I said: 

"There was a man here the other day from Johnstown 
named Shumaker who pleased me." 

"He will do very well." 

And so were the chief appointments determined. 

I wrote my inaugural address without consultation with 
anybody and sent a copy to Quay alone. He replied, saying 
that it was a statesmanlike document, suggesting no addi- 
tions and only one omission upon the ground that the 
subject was rather one of detail than proper for such a paper. 
I struck this matter from the address. 

January 19, 1903, Mrs. Pennypacker and I, with our 
three daughters, closed the house at 1540 North Fifteenth 
Street in Philadelphia, took a street car to the station of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad, where I bought tickets and checked 
the baggage for Harrisburg and that night we spent in the 
Executive Mansion. That mansion was to me never any- 
thing more than a temporary abiding place. There was not 
a single feature about it which had the slightest attractive- 
ness for me. All over it were the manifestations of great 
outlay, awkwardness and bad taste. There was not a print 
or a book or a piece of furniture which indicated the thought 
274 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

that it represented the state. Two adjoining plain houses 
had been thrown together and by that method space had 
been secured. The ground floor front was taken up with 
a huge reception room in a brilliant red color looking like 
the saloon of an ocean steamer and supplied with shght 
French chairs upon which you sat down only at the peril of 
going through them. A flight of stairs at each end ran to 
the fourth story, but there was no means of communication 
aloft except through the chambers. When, therefore, these 
were occupied and the traveler wanted to go twenty feet 
across, the only course was to go down one flight of stairs 
through the reception room and up the other flight, suggest- 
ing a journey of a quarter of a mile. In the second stor}'^ 
was another huge room called "the guests' chamber." It 
had been furnished with an expensive and profuse suit of 
mahogany, which, with a grand piano, the judgment of some 
prior lady occupant of the mansion had decreed should be 
painted white. There were twenty-three mirrors in the 
room, all at such elevations that in no one of them could a 
man see to shave himself. The light was at the head of the 
bed. It was turned ofl" at the other end of the room. On 
the way stood two or three narrow upright pedestals sur- 
mounted with heavy and costly vases. After putting out 
the light the stranger threaded his way to bed in terror. 
One of the vases was knocked over while we were there, and 
I thanked the Lord. The mansion was supplied by the 
state; there the official entertainments were given, and there 
it was expected that the governor should live. A statute 
provided that the board of public grounds and buildings 
should pay the expenses, but what was to be included in 
these expenses was nowhere defined. The state employed a 
butler and other servants and put them in the house to take 
care of its property and render service, but it was left to 
the governor to feed them from his own resources. This 
was an imposition, for the reason that if left to himself he 
could secure a house and appointments to accord with his 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

means and salary. There had been seven employees in the 
house. We cut them down to five. In the course of my 
term the feeding of these people cost me several thousands 
of dollars. At one time I asked the opinion of the attorney 
general upon the matter and he informed me that in his 
view the state was required to provide this sum. It appeared 
to me, however, to be a question of some uncertainty and, 
preferring to feel entirely clear in all financial transactions 
between the state and myself, I paid the bills and let the 
subject rest. Each successive governor, with the aid of his 
wife, had taken a hand in fixing the mansion, and my suc- 
cessor made extensive improvements, but nothing except 
repair was done to it during my term. In my view it was 
not worth the expenditure. The space between the Capitol 
and the Susquehanna River, now occupied by the gentry of 
the town, ought to be confiscated and thrown into a park 
and somewhere within the enclosure a home for the governor 
erected in keeping with the importance of his office. 

The next day, January 20th, a cold, raw, bleak day with 
occasional falls of snow, the chief justice, the Honorable 
D. Newlin Fell, my old friend, administered to me the oath 
of office and I stood, with uncovered head, in the presence 
of an immense crowd and read my inaugural address. There 
was a great parade of the National Guard and clubs, at the 
head of which rode Marlin E. Olmsted, a leading lawyer 
and a member of Congress who just missed being the 
speaker. He was capable of filling, with credit, any public 
position. He did not have that quality which is called 
magnetism, but, what is more important, he possessed in 
abundance character and intelligence. Coming to Harris- 
burg as a clerk in one of the departments, he died unfortu- 
nately only too early, leaving a beautiful and attractive 
young wife and a vast estate. After an experience of four 
years of contact with them, in my opinion the strongest men 
in public work in the state were Marlin E. Olmsted, David 
T. Watson of Pittsburgh, Philander C. Knox of Pittsburgh 
276 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

and William U. Hensel of Lancaster, the last named having 
among other qualities a pronounced taste for literature. 

The State of Pennsylvania was a great commonwealth of 
over seven millions of people, twice as many as those pre- 
sided over by Queen Elizabeth, William of Orange and 
George Washington. I approached the duties of governor 
with certain well-defined convictions to be regarded and 
certain lines of policy to be pursued. The governorship was 
a climax of a career attained, and not a stepping stone to 
something beyond. The efforts of men are always weakened 
when they have some other end in view apart from the 
object they are called upon to accomplish. A trustee or 
director, who builds with the trust funds upon his own lands 
is always in danger. Therefore, I determined to make no 
attempt to build up any party or force to be used for my 
own purposes and to make no money save what came from 
my salary. Many governors had had their eyes fixed so 
intently upon the United States Senate and the presidency 
that they overlooked their opportunities as governors. I 
determined to give my personal attention to the work, as 
far as it was possible, and to have my future and repute 
rise or fall in accord with what was accomplished or left 
undone. I entertained the common and erroneous belief 
that the incumbents of public office were in the main idle 
and untrustworthy and I determined that I would improve 
conditions so far as it was within my power to do it. The 
man who endeavors to convince the populace of his own 
virtues by proclaiming the wrongs which other people com- 
mit is an admitted charlatan. Improvement is accomplished 
only by taking the steps which are necessary to make con- 
ditions better, and these steps generally begin pretty near 
to home. It would have been very easy for me to have 
gained temporary repute by raising a clamor over the 
shortcomings of my predecessor. Such opportunities 
always exist. What I did was to say to him that I supposed 
he had some personal friends in station who were near to him 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

and whom he would hke to have retained and that so far as 
I could I would protect them. He named to me a brother 
of his wife and a few others holding minor positions. 
Nobody ever heard me say a word to his discredit. Nobody 
ever heard me utter a word of abuse of the members of the 
legislature. There was no occasion for it. As a general 
thing they were the representative men of their respective 
locations, ranging from men of high culture — like Roberts, 
Fox and Sproul — to the ordinary artisan engaged in doing a 
public work as well as he knew how to do it. Those who, 
like my old friend Blankenburg, Mayor of Philadelphia, 
think that they can get a legislative body to adopt measures 
by calling them thieves make a great mistake and generally 
accomplish little. 

I determined also to consult as much as possible with 
the politicians. There was no probability of my knowing 
too much and their experience was of a kind which enabled 
them to give useful information. Beside, no man is strong 
enough to go it quite alone, and his ability to do depends 
largely upon the forces behind him. While, then, my first 
duty was toward the state, I recognized a subsidiary duty 
to the party which elected me and an obligation to those 
who had trusted me and given me support. If I had turned 
upon Quaj^, as Wilson turned upon Harvey and Smith 
in New Jersey, I should have given an exhibition of what 
I regard as doubtful ethics. Again, unlike Wilson, I did 
not regard the duties of the executive office and the suc- 
cess of the party as being upon the same plane. To me the 
latter was subsidiary and subordinate, and, doing what I 
could to help the party and its leaders, the determination 
of the questions arising within the state depended upon me, 
and my obligation was to look to the welfare of the state. 

Nor is the test of what ought to be done the outcry of 
the people. He who has the true spirit of a statesman will 
seek to ascertain not what the people want but what it is 
that for their permanent good they should have. Often an 
278 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

imp of a demagogue leads a herd of swine into the sea and 
there are they drowned. The real truth of the m^atter is 
that the masses of the people are ill trained and uninformed. 
Their judgment upon any specific subject, and especially 
upon the involved questions of laws and statescraft, is an 
imperfect judgment. There are a few men who know how 
to run a railroad train and the rest of us only travel. There 
is one man who can perform an operation for appendicitis 
and we let him cut us to pieces. Since the permanence of 
the institutions of this country depends ultimately upon the 
good sense and conscience of the people, the outcome is 
still problematical and uncertain. It may be conceded 
that, given sufficient time, the popular judgment is apt to 
settle upon the correct principles, yet in the meantime 
Joan of Arc has been burned to death, Poland has been 
parted in fragments, the Boers have been robbed of their 
mines, and the Capitol at Washington has been lain in 
ashes. 

Quite recently our system of government was changed 
by providing for the popular election of United States 
Senators. It was a long step in a wrong direction. But, 
what gives warning is the fact that it was done without 
anybody stopping to consider the significance or conse- 
quences of the change. Therefore, my inclination was to 
regard measures from the point of view of their propriety 
and utility and to give little heed to the interested or irre- 
sponsible comment which might follow 

There were two subjects which gave me cause for anxiety. 
Having never been tested in serious executive work, I felt 
uncertain as to how I should act in the event of an extended 
labor strike. Mentally I proceeded no further than to 
determine to go to the locality and gather the facts for 
myself. I had also some dread of a collision with Roosevelt 
should he attempt to come into the state, as he had done 
before, a movement which it was my intention to prevent. 
It was one further step in the direction of a development, 

279 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

that has steadily taken place for many years, of the destruc- 
tion of the authority of the states and the concentration of 
all power in Washington. This tendency meant that in the 
end, after the national government has become top-heavy, 
some man with the impulses and lack of self-restraint of 
Roosevelt will stay there continuously. To me the situation 
seemed to be propitious. It is very doubtful whether the 
like of it had ever occurred in an American state before. A 
man had been chosen for governor whose associations with 
the state took him back to the settlement, whose studies 
had made him familiar with the growth of its institutions, 
whose training had been in a profession which ought to have 
prepared him for carefulness in deliberation and circum- 
spection in action, and whose habits had been such as fairly 
to insure proprietj^ of conduct. Moreover, he had been 
elected without seeking the office, without having paid any 
money to secure it and without having been tied up with 
promises and obligations which might interfere with the 
performance of his duties. He came to the office, therefore, 
with no other purpose than to endeavor to advance the 
interests of the state. The situation was emphasized by 
the fact that contemporaneously Massachusetts chose a 
governor, William L. Douglass, who put his face, as an 
advertisement for the sale of shoes, in every available place 
in the country and whose purpose in securing the office 
appeared to be to use his influence in lowering the duties 
on hides ; and that New York, a few years later, elected as 
Governor, William Sulzer, an uncleanly outcome of the 
slums, who had to be removed by impeachment. There are 
two essentials, however, to a full harvest: good seed and 
favorable conditions. No poet ever arises until there is 
sufficient literary development about him to appreciate 
what he writes. Rembrandt paints no portraits until the 
time comes when there is a desire for the expression of art. 
No Vanderbilt constructs a fortune on the island of Juan 
Fernandez, no statesman ever appears among a people until 
280 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

they are ready to do their part in giving him recognition. 
When the stress comes the arms of Joshua have to be sup- 
ported. Quay had earnestly tried to do a service for Penn- 
sylvania. Little esteem did he win by the effort. The 
difference between his reputation and that of Clay over the 
country and abroad consists in the fact that Kentucky stood 
firmly behind Clay with all of his faults and that Pennsyl- 
vania, so far as expression went, failed so to stand behind 
Quay with all of his merits. 

Having thought carefully over the policy which ought 
to be pursued in order to secure the public benefit, in my 
inaugural address I announced definitely these propositions : 

1. There is too much legislation. More consideration 
ought to be given to acts of assembly and the bulk of leg- 
islation ought to be lessened. 

2. The modern tendency to create new crimes by act 
of assembly ought to be curbed. 

3. The state ought to be apportioned into senatorial 
and representative districts, as required by the constitution. 

4. The ballot ought to be made more simple, and the 
right of a man to vote a straight party ticket, if he desired, 
ought to be maintained. 

5. The power of corporations to take private property 
upon the theory of public need by the exercise of the right 
of eminent domain ought to be permitted, after the ascer- 
tainment by the state itself of the existence of such need. 
The right of eminent domain should be carefully restricted. 

6. The state is interested, within reasonable bounds, 
in bringing about a condition of things in which, in the dis- 
tribution of the rewards resulting from business ventures, 
capital shall have less of profit and labor more of 
compensation. 

7. No man should be permitted to interfere, upon any 
pretense whatever, with another who may choose to sell 
his labor, and violence should be promptly and rigidly 
suppressed. 

281 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

8. To permit foreign corporations to exploit our coal, 
iron, oil and other products and the state get no benefit, is a 
mistake. A tax should be imposed upon these products, the 
proceeds to be applied to the betterment of the roads. 

9. In order to increase a sentiment of patriotism, the 
Camp Grounds of Valley Forge and Bushy Run should be 
preserved by the state. 

10. The University of Pennsylvania should be cared 
for by the state as provided for in the Constitution of 1776. 

11. Newspapers ought to be held responsible for the 
want of reasonable care in what they publish, and to be 
required to publish the names of their owners with each issue. 

12. The state should aid Pittsburgh to unite, in one 
municipality, the populations at the head waters of the 
Ohio. 

13. The state should aid Philadelphia in opening a 
way to the sea. 

As will be seen hereafter, each one of these propositions 
was given effect before my term was finished, except that of 
taxing coal, oil and iron as it is produced, and since I left 
the office my suggestion has been followed and such a tax 
imposed upon coal. But to accomplish such a programme 
required effort; at every step there was obstruction, and 
my four years were filled with storms from start to finish. 
Human nature is so constituted that the individual who does 
anything beyond the ordinary, in any line of endeavor, is 
sure to encounter the opposition of the interests adversely 
affected, of the doctrinaires who want things done in some 
other way, and of the conservatives who want nothing done 
at all; and it generally happens that those who may be 
benefited go off to enjoy what they have secured and leave 
the battle to be waged without their assistance. 

I offered the position of private secretary to Colonel 
J. Granville Leach, a friend of long standing, who had been 
in the legislature and whom I had been helping all of the 
time I was on the Bench, but he declined, no doubt waiting 
282 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

for something of larger consequence. I then chose Henry S. 
Dotterer, of a German family along the Perkiomen, who had 
been chief bookkeeper for Peter Wright & Sons, an author 
of some note, and who had a certain canny wisdom of his 
own. He was a hale, hearty, strong man, but only a few 
days before we had arranged to go to Harrisburg he caught 
cold which inflamed the prostate gland. He wanted to get 
well immediately, and went to the Medico-Chirurgical 
College. The physicians looked him over, told him he ran 
no risk, and performed an operation. In a day or two he 
was dead. Then they said he had had Bright's disease. 

With some uneasiness, at the suggestion of Leach, I 
then selected Bromley Wharton, a brother of Anne Hollings- 
worth Wharton, the authoress, whom I had long known, a 
member of an old family, and he did very well indeed, being 
ever quick, active and attentive, having quite a faculty for 
being obeisant to the important and for dismissing the bores 
affably. 

A day or two after the inauguration an ostensible lady 
drove up in a carriage to the mansion and sent up her card 
to Mrs. Pennypacker, who was an entire stranger in the city 
and did not know its people. In the reception room the 
woman began to talk, presently mentioned public affairs 
and began to ask questions. This awakened suspicion 
and she was dismissed. A few days later a full-page por- 
trait of Mrs. Pennypacker, secured by making a sketch in 
pencil while she was on a railroad train, appeared in the 
North American, accompanied by what purported to be 
portraits of my daughters, which had been probably taken 
from the stock of actresses on the shelves, and a long rigma- 
role was printed under the lie in huge head lines : "The First 
Lady of Pennsylvania writes for the Sunday North Ameri- 
can on Live Current Problems." What could be more 
despicable? The woman ought to have been trounced and 
Van Valkenberg, the editor of the sheet, ought to have been 
given severer punishment. 

283 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

The State Library had long been neglected. With the 
exception of Ehrenfeld and Egle, the hbrarians had either 
been poHticians, pure and simple, or incompetents, who 
neglected their work. The archives, consisting of papers 
tied up in loose bundles, had long been the stamping ground 
of literary thieves. I put at the head of the library Thomas 
Lynch Montgomery, a trained librarian, who had been in 
charge of the Wagner Listitute in Philadelphia, a member of 
a family of high social standing and a man of great efficiency. 
I likewise had arrangements made to have the archives that 
remained and all of the papers of the departments, prior to 
a certain early date, repaired, chronologically arranged, 
bound into volumes and put in the library. Carson, 
Wharton and Montgomery, who came with myself, and Dr. 
Samuel G. Dixon, president of the Academy of Natural 
Sciences, and John C. Groome, captain of the First City 
Troop, whom I drew along later, were referred to as the 
influx of gentlemen into the political life of the state. 

Believing that improvement, like all of the virtues, 
begins at the home and would be best advanced by setting 
a proper example, I began the work of reformation with the 
governor. All the passes from the railroads and all the 
free privileges from express companies and other corpora- 
tions, which were poured in upon me, were returned, with 
expressions of appreciation, and, when traveling, I paid my 
fare. The expenses of the mansion, paid by the state, were 
cut down from about fourteen thousand dollars a year to 
about two thousand dollars. I kept no horses and rode in a 
cab. I declined to toss the first ball at the opening of the 
baseball season, and the like, not that there was any harm 
in so doing, but it seemed to me that the office ought not to 
be used for advertising purposes, and that it was well to let 
people see that the incumbent had regard for its dignity. 
I made it a point to be at the Executive Department at 9 
A. M. and to remain there until 6 p. m., and to see that no 
papers were issued under the authority of the governor 
284 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

without my personal knowledge of their contents. While 
Woodrow Wilson, as governor, was stumping through the 
West denouncing the methods of the Standard Oil Company, 
chartered in New Jersey, no doubt other charters granting 
like powers were being issued at Trenton. The world would 
be ever so much better if we could only succeed in prevailing 
upon each man to attend to his own duties and look after 
his own conduct. And now, after having, along with some 
moralizing, indicated the groundwork upon which the 
structure was to be built, let the narrative proceed. 

Strange to relate, my first struggle against opposing 
forces was with my old friends, the corporation lawyers. 
All of the trouble in this country over the corporations — 
and much of it has been the hullabaloo of persons eager to 
catch the ear of the populace in order to help their own 
fortunes — ^has arisen because those who had charge of the 
granting of their powers were careless and indifferent. 
This is the point at which the correcting agency ought to be 
applied. Complaint afterward is feeble and apt to be futile. 
It had become the habit at Harrisburg, as elsewhere, for 
charters to be issued as a matter of course, and they were 
supervised in the outer office. It is even said that a clerk 
was trained to imitate the signature and add the approval 
of the governor. Every charter which went out during my 
four years had my actual approval and bears my autograph. 
It had been the custom for the lawyer, in drafting the grant 
of power, to use the general words of the statute. I required 
that the objects be defined and saw to it that the constitu- 
tional provision that no two different purposes should be 
included, was carried into effect. On one occasion an appli- 
cation was made for the right to make and sell explosives 
in perpetuity. The danger of such a grant can readily be 
seen. It was refused until the time was limited to twenty- 
five years. The statute required that ten per cent of the 
capital stock should be paid into the treasury of the corpora- 
tion. It had come to be the practice to take out charters 

285 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

with only nominal capital, with the expectation that as 
need arose the capital could be increased. In other words, 
it was speculation in chartered rights. The Donora Light, 
Heat and Power Company, with a capital stock of only one 
thousand dollars, a hundred dollars in the treasury, entirely 
insufficient for the work proposed to be done, desired a 
charter and I refused approval, holding that there must be 
a capital stock of at least five thousand dollars. This was 
an arbitrary sum of my own fixing, but it meant that there 
must be five hundred dollars in the treasury, enough to 
ensure good faith. There ensued a great hubbub and out- 
cry among the lawyers. The governor had no such power. 
It was his duty to approve. A public hearing was asked in 
order that a re-consideration might be secured, and was 
granted. Lawyers from over the state, including Robert 
Snodgrass of Harrisburg and Richard C. Cochrane of York, 
gathered before me and argued at length the questions of 
the power of the governor and his relation to the granting of 
charters. I wrote an opinion holding that the approval 
by the governor was not intended to be merely that he should 
see that the paper was in proper form, but meant his assent 
to the granting of the power contained in it. There was 
much professional and newspaper talk about the necessity 
of my receding and about compelling me to approve by 
mandamus. Had such a writ come, I should not have given 
it the slightest attention, holding that within his sphere the 
governor is entirely beyond the control of the courts. How- 
ever, the profession finally accepted the decision gracefully. 
My successors followed the precedent which had been 
established, and since that time no corporation has been 
chartered in Pennsylvania unless it had a capital of five 
thousand dollars, with five hundred dollars in the treasury. 
The reform was real and important. 

The next jolt was with the Republican organization of 
Dauphin County, supported by both of the United States 
Senators. A vacancy occurred in the court of common 
286 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

pleas of that county and the forces there agreed upon S.J. 
McCarroll. I was especially anxious not to make mistakes 
in the appointment of judges and felt that professional 
fitness was the most important qualification. I listened to 
everybody who wanted to talk to me upon the subject. 
Lyman D. Gilbert and Charles H. Bergner, leaders of the 
local Bar, were in accord in the opinion that the fittest 
appointment would be that of Michael W. Jacobs. Justice 
J. Hay Brown of the Supreme Court came to me to urge that 
appointment, and he was very decided in his opinion. In 
deference to these professional judgments I appointed 
Jacobs. The blow was mitigated, however, by the appoint- 
ment at the same time of John J. Henderson, who had been 
supported by both senators and had the reputation of having 
done good legal work in his county court, to the Superior 
Court. Against Jacobs the party nominated and elected 
George Kunkel and, therefore, in my first bout with the 
politicians I finally came out second best. 

An act was passed giving to Governor Stone and some 
of the heads of departments the desks they had used while 
in office. It pursued a custom which had long prevailed. 
I approved the act, with the suggestion that the furniture 
to be put in their places be selected with a view to its 
remaining as the property of the state. 

With the growth of the work of the state there is a 
steadily increasing need for additional employees to attend 
to it. Each head of a department is loath to ask for such 
increase, for the reason that he is at once assailed in the 
newspapers for causing further outlay. I found a long list 
of such persons whose salaries were paid from the contingent 
funds, a timid way of meeting a difficulty, and I put an end 
to the practice by sending to the legislature a message 
naming these employees and recommending that they be 
regularly employed. This treatment of the matter led to 
no criticism, although it openly increased the force. 

As the legislative session progressed, and the bills as 

287 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

they had been passed began to come to me, they were all 
analyzed and those which were faulty either in thought or 
construction were vetoed. Since this method of treatment 
had no reference to the sponsors of the bill or the interests 
which favored the enactment, it not infrequently happened 
that bills which were rejected had been favored by the 
Republican party and its leaders. Such happenings had 
just that flavor of excitement which pleased the newspapers, 
and by the close of the session I had received very general 
encomiums. It was my endeavor always in expressing 
disapproval of a measure to do it good-naturedly. Often a 
state senator who heard that some pet measure, which he 
thought safe, had gone overboard, would come to the office 
in wrath and after reading the veto message, laugh and say 
that ''the old man was right after all." A Quaker wrote 
to me March 21st: 

Dear Governor: 

Right now I want to tell thee that on account of thy connection 
with the Quay forces I opposed thy election, but now I extend 
my hearty support. The stand thou hast taken against vicious and 
mercenary legislation is to be commended and encouraged. 

To which I replied : 

Dear Friend: 

I very much appreciate your letter and still more appreciate 
the spirit which induced you to write it. My only purpose is to 
do as well as I know how. I feel quite sure if you were to observe 
closely the course of Senator Quay and could become better 
acquainted with him you would find much in him also to commend. 

There was nothing, however, spectacular about this 
kind of service and nothing likely to attract wide or pro- 
longed attention. It was only doing the work of the state 
as it ought to be done. The volume of laws was reduced in 
size from the twelve hundred pages of that of my predecessor 
to seven hundred pages. My two volumes stand among the 
printed acts of assembly hke oases, since, with the advent 
288 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

of my successor, the volume immediately ran up to the old 
dimensions. 

In the State of Missouri a law was passed relating to 
baking powders. It led to great scandal and was followed 
by many prosecutions, so that Governor Joseph W. Folk, 
who urged them, was praised all over the country for his 
vigilance, became a national character, and almost reached 
the presidency. A like act of assembly was passed in 
Pennsylvania and I threw it into the waste basket, saying: 

This bill makes it a misdemeanor, subject to a fine of $100, 
for any person to manufacture or sell baking powder which 
contains alum in any form or shape, unless there be printed on a 
label on the outside of the package, in black ink in legible type, 
not smaller than small pica, the full name and address of the 
manufacturer and the words, "This Baking Powder contains 
alum." It is evident that the passage of this bill was secured by 
the manufacturer or vendor of some rival baking powder with 
intent to obtain an unfair advantage. It is evident from the fact 
that the conspicuous printing of these words would be likely to 
deter purchasers. It would be entirely proper to require that all 
baking powders should have upon the outside of the package a 
label describing the ingredients and their quantities, but it would 
be manifestly unjust to require one ingredient to be displayed 
without any reference to quantity. 

There was no commotion, no scandal, and the event 
entirely escaped attention. The incident well illustrates two 
different methods of meeting the same problem and the 
temptations that beset men in public life to do the sensa- 
tional in preference to the useful. 

A message which was very widely circulated was one 
vetoing a bill for the protection of bears and cubs. The 
message ran : 

A well-considered bill to prevent a ruthless and wanton 
destruction of bears and cubs would, no doubt, answer a public 
need, but the present bill is entirely too sweeping and too stringent 
in its provisions. " It is directed that it shall not be lawful for any 
person or persons after the passage of this act to catch, take or 

19 289 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

kill in this state, or, except as hereinafter provided, have in his or 
her possession, or under his or her control after the same shall 
have been so caught, taken or killed, any bear or cub save during 
the month of November." The bear is an animal not always of a 
gentle disposition and especially if it be a female bear with cubs. 
If a wanderer in the woods is attacked by such a bear in some other 
month than November, what is he or she to do? 

For the 20th of March I had an engagement to go with 
Dr. John H. Fager, a gentleman of Harrisburg interested in 
the study of natural history, on an exploring tour through 
Wetzel Swamp. The newspapers announced that Senator 
Penrose and State Senator James P. McNichol were coming 
that afternoon to consult with me about some affairs of 
state, but there was no engagement with me and no message 
sent to me. I went with Fager to the swamp. The gentle- 
men came, did not find me; McNichol returned to Phila- 
delphia and Penrose and I had a consultation when I 
returned in the evening. There was much talk about the 
incident, many editorials written and glaring headlines 
printed stating that ''Penrose Waits and Frets while Gover- 
nor in Boots Hunts for Bugs in the Bogs." 

The constitution provides that the incoming governor 
shall take his seat during a session of the legislature. It 
is the provision of dilettanti, who constructed an impracti- 
cable and in some ways an unworkable constitution. 
There is no reason why he could not have begun in the years 
between sessions and so have had time to prepare for his 
work. Governor Stone, just at the close of his term, sent 
in to the senate the names of many officials appointed by 
him. I had no time to interfere and they were confirmed. 
I issued commissions to all of them, but later took the bull 
by the horns and removed some of them where I had other 
views. This, of course, led to some trouble. 

It is one of the unwritten laws, never infringed upon, 
that the governor shall not appear before the legislature, 
and it is founded upon the correct theory that the legislative 
290 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

bodies shall be kept free from undue influence. On the 
24th of March I was officially invited to be present at a 
session of the legislature. No other governor ever received 
such an invitation. The members of the legislature received 
me very graciously and I made an address in the course of 
which it was said : 

It would be a breach of courtesy, and it would ill become me to 
make reference to any legislation before you or which may come 
before you. The constitution provides a method by which the 
governor may make his recommendations. It is wise that that 
method should be pursued. I may, however, say a word about 
our mutual relations. We are both, in-so-far as we may, edeavor- 
ing together to work out results for the good of the people and 
the commonwealth. I may say that if the governor should use 
his power for the purpose of enforcing legislation it would be an 
interference with our principles of government. On the other 
hand, if the legislature in its legislation attempts to carry it out 
by other methods than those of the executive, to that extent it 
interferes with those principles. 

Here is broached a theory of government very different 
from and much more nearly correct and safe than that acted 
upon by Roosevelt and Wilson in our national affairs. In 
the days of Thaddeus Stevens the Congress endeavored to 
impose upon the President. In more recent days the Presi- 
dent is making rapid strides in the way of encroaching upon 
Congress. Both ventures are based upon impulse rather 
than upon reason, and they are equally dangerous to our 
institutions. 

In my opinion pretty much all of the value of civil 
service reform consisted in the principle of permanence of 
tenure and, therefore, in no instance was there a removal 
from the routine offices because of factional or political 
differences. There was much pressure for the removal of 
Frederic W. Fleitz, assistant attorney general and Colonel 
Lewis E. Beitler, the deputy secretary of the commonwealth 
and others, because of political disobedience, but they were 
all retained. The heads of departments were called together 

291 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

at stated times to consult with each other and me about 
the good of the service. There had been much talk about 
the profits of the printing office. The reports of the depart- 
ments had grown to be bulky volumes, and as a general thing 
they were little read, and for the most part in a short time 
thrown away as rubbish. 

The profit came from spreading out tables and leaving 
pages and half pages with nothing on them, called by the 
printers "fat." This ''fat" was eliminated. For instance, 
the report of the factory inspector was cut down from a 
volume of six hundred pages to a pamphlet of forty pages. 
And during my term the acts of assembly were bound in 
sheepsldn as the contract required, instead of in "skiver." 
In fact, the profits were so taken out of the printing that it 
became difficult to find a printer willing to undertake the 
state printing, and there has been no scandal in connection 
with the work since. Much of this success was due to the 
fact that A. Nevin Pomeroy, put at the head of the depart- 
ment, was a capable man, himself the publisher of a news- 
paper, and skilled in the ways of the trade. 

Cassatt's bill to legitimatize betting upon horse-racing 
was introduced in one of the houses but recalled, as I 
understand, because of the fear that it would meet with 
a veto. 

An incident occurred which caused some amusement. 
It was known that I favored state aid to the University of 
Pennsylvania, but the pet among the legislators was the 
Medico-Chirui^ical College, and a bill making a large appro- 
priation to the latter institution came to me, passed by 
both houses. I sent a message to the legislature explaining 
that the approval of such bills depended upon a general 
examination of the finances, that, therefore, it was necessary 
to have all the bills relating to such institutions before me 
at the same time and asking that the others be sent at once. 
They complied. A correspondent wrote to the Philadelphia 
Record: 
292 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

No use trying to fool that man on appropriations or money 
matters, on anything in fact outside of political scheming or 
other politics on which he defers to Quay's judgment. With 
these exceptions he is too canny for the boys here. In the present 
case the ferret started after the rat but the rat has annihilated the 
ferret. 

For the first time in recent periods the University of 
Pennsylvania received a direct appropriation apart from that 
given to the hospital. I revived the custom of having its 
trustees meet once a year in the office of the governor and 
of having it report its finances annually to the legislature, 
and I had its report as a state institution incorporated in 
Smull's Handbook. 

A bill was passed increasing the salaries of the judges 
of the state. A like bill had been vetoed by Governor 
Beaver upon the ground that attempting to add to their 
compensation during their existing terms, it was unconsti- 
tutional. My view was that it could not possibly be uncon- 
stitutional, for the reason that it could be sustained by 
holding it not to apply to the existing terms of the judges 
then in office. I, therefore, signed the bill, thus aiding my 
old associates of the judiciary, including Beaver himself, 
who was then a judge of the Superior Court. It never came 
to my knowledge, however, that any of them refused the 
salary during the then existing terms. While giving them 
larger compensation to encourage more steady application, 
there was no increase of the number of the judiciary while 
I was governor. Bills were passed to add to the courts in 
Philadelphia, Allegheny, Erie, Cambria, Delaware and other 
counties, and all of them failed. This course interfered 
with many movements and caused many disappointments, 
but my judgment was the judges were already too numerous 
and that, besides, litigation was not a thing to be encouraged. 

The movement for the improvement of the roads of the 
commonwealth interested me exceedingly. A bill for the 
purpose was fostered in the senate by Sproul of Delaware 

208 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

and Roberts of Montgomery, but another was introduced in 
the house and the two houses failed to agree. The end of 
the session was approaching and I was informed the move- 
ment had failed. Then I sent a message saying: 

Throughout the whole of the session, I have refrained, as you 
have no doubt observed, from all attempts to affect legislation by 
personal influence,pressure or solicitation exerted upon the members 
of your honorable bodies. The constitution provides, however, a 
method for the presentation of the views of the governor upon 
that subject which is as follows: 

"He shall recommend ... to their consideration such meas- 
ures as he may judge expedient." 

I feel that the time has come when my duty requires me to 
indicate my view upon a measure now pending before you. In 
my opinion the most important subject you have had to consider 
during this session is that of providing a system for improving the 
roads of the commonwealth. The measures affecting the govern- 
ment of cities and extending the privileges of railroads and other 
corporations, grave as they may seem to be, are of much less 
consequence and can much better be deferred. To reach a con- 
clusion with regard to roads I believe to be essential. I have read 
with great care the bill which recently passed the senate and 
failed to meet the approval of the house and, while not perfect, 
it seems to be a bill which, if it became a law, would go far toward 
the accomplishment of the purposes intended and be of great 
benefit to the people. I, therefore, earnestly recommend its 
passage with assurances that whatever the governor can do to 
have it executed so as to be fair toward all parts of the state will 
be done. 

Then I summoned the entire committees of both houses 
before me, listened to a full discussion of their troubles 
and dismissed them with the statement that I expected them 
to come to an agreement. The bill was passed and this 
important step in the way of progress taken. 

As had been recommended in the inaugural message, an 
act had been passed and approved uniting the cities of 
Allegheny and Pittsburgh. 

And now the session of the legislature ended and that 
294 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

ordeal had been passed with general approval and with 
much of importance accomplished. The newspapers began 
to make suggestions that I would be the next Republican 
candidate for the Presidency of the United States. This 
situation, however, lasted for a very short time. The effort 
to better the conditions of life, so long as it only interfered 
with the plans of corporations and politicians, was much to 
be commended, but when the same care and thought were 
directed toward the improvement of journalism it was 
dreadful to contemplate. A bill had been passed called the 
*'Salus-Grady Bill," which made newspapers responsible 
for the want of reasonable care, and required them to publish 
on the editorial page, with each issue, the names of those 
responsible for the management. In other words, it made 
them subject to the legal principles which govern the other 
business relations of men. It was a slight step in the right 
direction, that was all. It had been recommended in my 
inaugural address and had been carefully drawn, Carson and 
myself taking pains to see that it could result in no injury 
to legitimate newspaper enterprise. It was not the sugges- 
tion of Quay, Penrose or any other politician, but was the 
outcome of my experience upon the bench, where I had 
known many an unfortunate to be convicted, and many a 
criminal to be acquitted, because of impressions made upon 
the minds of jurors by the reckless and inaccurate publica- 
tion of the facts, and because of the irresponsible interference 
of the press in all sensational trials, to the disadvantage of 
the administration of justice. In fact, the doctrine of the 
liberty of the press is an anachronism which has become 
harmful and the time has come when it ought to be discarded 
from our constitutions and laws. Like monarchy and 
priestcraft, it once answered a good purpose. When kings 
secretly imprisoned and beheaded men who thwarted their 
purposes it was an agency for the welfare of the people. 
Those times have gone. The newspaper is now a venture 
to make a profit and everywhere it shows the results of the 

295 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

temptation to sell those wares that find a market — filth, 
scandal and crime. The secrecy which was once a weapon 
for kings is now its weapon, since it prints attacks and 
destroys, and whose was the brain that conceived or the 
hand that struck, no man knows. The privileges once 
helpful now serve the purposes of gain. The proprietors and 
editors of newspapers are no worse than the rest of us, but 
they require the same kind of watching and ought to have 
no greater facilities. 

The bill before me was to be treated like all other bills 
and to be determined according to its merits. Of course, 
I was well aware of the capacity of the press to do personal 
mischief. When I vetoed the bill authorizing the Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad Company and other railroad companies 
to take homesteads in the exercise of the right of eminent 
domain, no doubt they were pained, but they were noiseless. 
I did not need to be told that the stopping of the sale of 
scandal would not be noiseless, but I was anxious that 
Pennsylvania should make the first real effort to correct 
what thoughtful men regard as the most far-reaching of the 
evils of modern life. Before any disposition of the bill 
should be made, the newspaper men asked for a public 
hearing. It was to be made a great occasion to which the 
attention of the country should be attracted. They pre- 
pared for it by proclaiming that the bill, which no one of 
them printed so that what it contained could be seen, had 
been devised by the "gang" in order to be a "gag" upon the 
press which was only eager to expose iniquity for the good 
of the public. My reputation was at stake and now it was 
to be finally determined whether I should take my place as 
the creature of a corrupt gang or become the glorious 
champion of the rights of the people. On such an issue who 
could be in doubt. The Press had a cartoon representing a 
beautiful and chaste maiden (the newspaper press), proudly 
erect, pleading for justice before me, a judge in robes, while 
a brutal and hideous fellow with a cigar in his mouth and 
296 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

wearing the prison stripes (the legislature of the state) was 
whispering in my ear and tendering me a chain to fasten 
around her beautiful limbs. I granted the request for a 
hearing and fixed it for the 21st of April in the hall of the 
House of Representatives. At that time George Nox 
McCain wrote : '' I faced the most imposing array of journal- 
istic talent and ability that any Governor of Pennsylvania 
ever greeted." The bill was supported by Richard C. Dale 
and Alexander Simpson, Jr., able lawyers, and Charles 
Emory Smith had been selected to represent the newspapers. 
Smith was a man of conamonplace ability, with a round, 
good-looking face, dark eyes and a pleasing voice which 
could make the most ordinary and conventional utterances 
sound as though they had some meaning. To evolve an 
idea was beyond him and he never undertook the task. He 
had gone in youth from Connecticut to New York, and 
later had come from New York to Philadelphia and, like 
many others whom I shall not undertake to mention, he 
was forever seeking to make Pennsylvania take on the 
aspects of the place of his birth, which he had abandoned 
because it afforded him no opportunities. If Smith had been 
at all a wise man he would have said that the bill had no 
terrors for newspapers like the Press, he would have wel- 
comed an effort at improvement beneficial to real journals 
and would have left the odium to be borne by such sheets as 
the North American, whose standing was such that if ever 
any decent person was caught reading it he excused himself 
by saying that he had picked it up on the cars. But there 
was an appeal to his vanity. He was made to believe that 
he would stand forth hereafter as the defender of the liberty 
of the press alongside of those heroes in the past who had 
confronted real dangers. Since the danger had disappeared, 
all of this was opera bouffe, but Smith was a serious-minded 
man, with little sense of humor, and he failed to catch this 
aspect of the situation. He committed his speeches to 
memory. I have heard him many times, and his orations 

297 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

and stump speeches often wound up with the description of 
the pathos with which a born American in far-away oppressed 
China beheld the Stars and Stripes, the Flag of the Free. 
He had not gone very far in his address on this occasion 
before he referred to the insolence of the legislature. I 
stopped him at once and said : 

''They may be mistaken, but cannot be insolent, because 
they are vested with authority. Therefore, nothing that 
they do can be insolence. Beside, they are, like myself, a 
branch of the government and it would not become me to 
listen to any offensive terms applied to them. We must all 
treat them with respect. I think, therefore, Mr. Smith, 
you had better confine your remarks to arguments upon the 
merits or demerits of the bill." 

I had done the same kind of thing many a time in court, 
but doubtless it was an unusual experience for Smith. In 
all probability he had committed to memory an oration in 
which there was much denunciation intended for wide dis- 
tribution. My interruption had disturbed his mental pro- 
cesses. He was unfitted for extemporaneous discussion, 
was very much overweighted by his opponents and, even in 
the opinion of his newspaper friends who were present, he 
made a failure. Smith had given those friends to under- 
stand, as I was told, that his influence with me was such as 
to prevent the bill from becoming a law. His oration was 
printed, not as it was delivered, but as it was intended to 
have been delivered. A cunning man, looking to what he 
thought to be his own interest, would have gratified him, and, 
vetoing the bill would have earned the praise, if not the 
approval, of a set of men whose voices extend far and are 
to some extent potent. A timid man, signing it, would have 
said nothing and left the legislature and the party leaders 
to share with him the buffets. I made the bill a law and 
gave my reasons, published with the statute, taking the 
full responsibility and thereby drew upon myself all of the 
javelins that could be hurled. No more was I a persona 
298 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

grata in the editorials. The reasons given in support of the 
act were never answered; they could not be; but the public 
was made familiar with the fact that I wore boots, that my 
hair, of which it may be incidentally noted there is a full 
supply, was often frowsy, and that I hunted bugs in Wetzel 
Swamp and other places. Artists were employed to exercise 
their ingenuity and prostitute their talents in making ugly 
pictures, and the newspapers, as the children are wont to 
say, made ''snoots" at me. In one sense the attacks were a 
tribute, since, after raking the field with the aid of money 
and research, as I have no doubt occurred, they were unable 
to find that I had ever taken money which did not belong 
to me, that I had ever betrayed anybody to his disadvan- 
tage, or that I had ever led any but the decent life of a 
gentleman. Besides, they overdid the matter. They 
made me known all over the United States and people felt 
that there must be some character in a man who did not 
fear the united power of the press and could come, 
unscathed, out of a contest with it. 

A few years later there was sent to me an article printed 
in Birmingham, Alabama, telling of the important events 
which had occurred on the 9th of April. Among them were 
the discovery of the Mississippi by Ferdinand de Soto, 
the Battle of Appomattox, and the birth of Samuel W. 
Pennypacker, Governor of Pennsylvania. My biography 
was printed throughout the far West. All sensible people, 
including such able newspaper correspondents as George 
Alfred Townsend ("Gath"), regarded it as entirely proper 
legislation likely to be helpful to their profession. Poor 
Smith, however, had lost his case, he was not large enough 
to see that my duty was not toward him or the newspapers, 
his vanity was hurt, and he made a persona^ matter of it, 
and became an enemy for life. Everything thereafter which 
he thought would be disagreeable to me was printed in his 
paper. On visiting "Kuchler's Roost" on the mountain top 
at Reading, at the request of its old owner, I wrote an 

299 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

impromptu squib in his album. Thereupon Smith worked 
up an editorial upon it in an effort at ridicule. He did 
worse. In my library is a bound volume labeled Newspaper 
Ethics, put away for the enlightenment of posterity as to 
current manners. In it are preserved : 

1. A colunm dispatch; printed in The Press, June 26, 
1903, saying that Governor A. B. Cummins of Iowa, in an 
address at Waynesburg College, had denounced the Penny- 
packer press muzzling law and said it would "forever stig- 
matize its author." 

2. Smith's editorial of June 27th, saying that ''Governor 
Pennypacker and his libel law have had no more stinging 
rebuke than was administered by another governor, Albert 
B. Cummins of Iowa. 

3. Letter of July 17, 1903, from Albert B. Cummins to 
John W. Campbell, saying: 

''I cannot say how the absurd story got abroad. . . . 
I did not say one word upon the subject nor did I in any 
manner refer to Governor Pennypacker." 

4. Letter of Charles Emory Smith, August 11, 1903, 
saying: 

"While he did not make the statements imputed to 
him in a public address at Waynesburg , College, he did 
make them in a public interview. . . . Publication awaits 
a full ascertainment of the facts." 

The publication of the facts was never made. 

5. Letter of Albert B. Cummins, August 22, 1903, saying : 
"I repeat that I did not say anything about the libel 

law or Governor Pennypacker to anybody in Wajnesburg 
or in Greene County. Indeed, I may make it stronger; 
I did not think about the libel law or of Governor Penny- 
packer while there. No matter who is responsible for it, it 
is pure fabrication." 

6. Letter of Edward W. Hacker, a correspondent of the 
Press, April 1, 1907, saying: 

"I am not responsible for the ridiculous stuff that 
300 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

appeared after the first sub-head in the Press' Schwenksville 
story on Sunday morning. I telegraphed them only the 
preceding matter, and some one in the office added the other 
details." 

7. Three clippings from successive issues of the Press, 
August 22, 1907, containing a dispatch from Johnstown 
purporting to give statements made by J. M. Shumaker, 
and showing the modifications made by "some one in the 
oJSice" so as to reflect upon me. 

8. The dispatch as sent from Johnstown inserted so that 
the comparison may be made. 

9. The denial by J. M. Shumaker of the alleged state- 
ments. 

10. An anonymous letter August 23, 1907, from an 
employee in the Press office to me, signing himself as "an 
admirer," in which he says that the Johnstown dispatch 
"was read to the managing editor or at least he was given the 
gist of it over the telephone, and he ordered that it be 
re-written so as to identify you as the person meant in the 
alleged statement of Shumaker's friend." He further says 
that the writer "lost his nerve and eliminated these two 
paragraphs from the later issues." 

All of these original papers found their way to me and I 
had them bound for preservation. The volume will never 
be purposely destroyed, because it is a curiosity and has a 
market value. As is apt to happen, in all probability, it will 
finally reach some public library and there be kept where 
the future investigator of morals will be able to see some of 
the causes which brought about the passage of the "Salus- 
Grady Press Muzzier" of 1903. 

Another word about Smith and then I think he will dis- 
appear from these pages. On the 4th of October, 1906, I 
gave a dinner at the Executive Mansion to Roosevelt, then 
President of the United States. Penrose came to me and 
asked me whether I would not invite Smith to be there, 
saying that for political reasons the party managers were 

301 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

anxious to have Roosevelt get the opportunity to talk to 
him. I am sure Penrose expected me to refuse. My reply 
was that if it were to be at my home, a different question 
would arise, but that this was not my private party, that 
it was proper the Press should be represented and Smith was 
a very suitable representative, and without any hesitation 
I promised to invite him. He accepted the invitation and 
came, altogether bland. It was after this dinner that the 
despatches referred to were re-written in the office of the 
Press. 

It would be incorrect to suppose that the newspaper 
assaults, though generally understood, were without injurious 
effect upon the state and me. The impression made by an 
attack is not removed by disproof. The reputation of a 
woman is soiled not only by a fact but by a breath. In men, 
the old animal instincts lie very close to the surface and 
animals instinctively turn upon anything stricken. There 
were those, even among my associates, who had seen me 
succeed up to the present, but who began to doubt whether, 
in the face of such a storm, I would not be compelled to 
succumb. The assaults made it more difficult for me to 
secure such legislation as the apportionment of the state and 
the creation of the constabulary. They weakened the 
loyalty of some of my subordinates. They induced at one 
time some of the leading members of the Philadelphia bar 
to assume a critical attitude. They affected some of my 
personal friends, and with Colonel J. Granville Leach, two 
of whose sons I kept in station ; Major William H. Lambert, 
with whom I had been most intimate and whom I had 
placed on the Board of City Trusts and in the council of 
the Historical Society and who had asked me to be his 
executor, and William Brooke Rawle, my relations were 
never quite the same afterward. They so influenced my 
successor, a well-meaning but timid man, that he felt that 
the main purpose of a governor was to see to it that he 
escaped with his life and a whole skin; and when Senator 
302 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

Knox asked Roosevelt to appoint me to the Supreme Court 
of the United States, the hero of San Juan Hill inquired : 

''What would the newspapers say?" 

Even now events were so shaping themselves as to 
afford later an opportunity to hostility, since the commission 
to erect a new capitol building, which commission I per- 
mitted to remain unchanged, had begun their work. 

By this time the administration had been completely 
organized and such changes as it was thought advisable to 
make had been made. Thomas J. Stewart, the Adjutant 
General; Israel W. Durham, the Insurance Commissioner; 
Nathan C. Schaeffer, Superintendent of Public Instruction ; 
J. T. Rothrock, Commissioner of Forestry, and James E. 
Roderick, who became head of the Department of Mines, 
were inherited from the last and former administrations. 

Frank M. Fuller, Secretary of the Commonwealth; 
Robert McAfee, Commissioner of Banking; N. B. Critch- 
field, Secretary of Agriculture; Dr. B. H. Warren, Dairy and 
Food Commissioner, and A. Nevin Pomeroy, Superintendent 
of Printing, had been recommended by Quay. Joseph W. 
Hunter, State Highway Commissioner, had been recom- 
mended by Senators Sproul and Roberts, John C. Delaney, 
Factory Inspector, had been appointed at the request of 
Charles Emory Smith. William E. Meehan, Commissioner 
of Fisheries, had been appointed on the recommendation of 
Henry F. Walton, Speaker of the House. Hampton L. 
Carson, Attorney General; Bromley Wharton, Private Sec- 
retary; Thomas L. Montgomery, State Librarian; H. A. 
Surface, Economic Zoologist, and James M. Shumaker, 
Superintendent of Grounds and Buildings, were my own 
selections. They all proved to be faithful to their duties 
and, with two exceptions, they never gave me cause for 
criticism. Durham was disposed to insist that his work 
should be conducted from Philadelphia rather than from the 
department at Harrisburg, which was unsatisfactory to me. 
Warren, a tall, slim man, with dark eyes and a furtive 

303 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

manner, possessed of some scientific attainments, had some 
years before written a book upon the birds of Pennsylvania 
which was published by the state. The newspapers, utterly 
indifferent as to whether it was good or bad, assailed him 
unmercifully and he became known as ''Birdie Warren." 
They had so cowed him that he was abject before them. 
Several times I endeavored to argue him into more courage, 
telling him it made no difference what they said, that their 
opinion was of no value, that the book was most meritorious, 
and it was entirely proper that the state should publish it, 
and the proof of its merit was that a copy could not be bought 
on the market for less than seven dollars, as I well knew, but 
all in vain. He felt that their power to harm a man in public 
life was unlimited. When, therefore, toward the end of my 
administration these forces blew a storm against me, he had 
no faith in my ability to withstand it ; he thought the safer 
place was under their wings, and he proved unsteadfast. 
I would have removed him had it not been for the fact that 
he had really tried to make a good record in the work of his 
office. 

Thomas J. Lynch, whom I filched from one of the depart- 
ments for my own service as executive clerk, was a source 
of great comfort. InteUigent and loyal, he was one of those 
hunters who always come back with the game in their bags. 
When sent upon a task all necessary efforts were made, the 
facts were always ascertained, and the principles governing 
them unraveled. 

Stewart deserves more than passing mention. He was 
born in Ireland and had his home in Norristown. He was a 
most persuasive and winning orator, having a rich voice, and 
no man knew better how to blend humor and pathos in 
order to produce results. In this respect it was nip and tuck 
between him and Henry Houck, later Secretary of Internal 
Affairs. Houck had the disposition of a Celt with the name 
and intonations of the Pennsylvania Dutch, and in his 
speeches, with his anecdotes, his tears, his native wit and his 
304 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

accent, was inimitable. When he went to Boston, he 
captured the town; when he ran for office, he always got 
more votes in the state than any one else on the ticket. It 
is said that he was never confused but upon one occasion. 
He had promised to speak at a dinner, and as it was an 
important affair, he made some memoranda. By an 
unlucky chance Stewart got hold of them, and being called 
upon first, he arose and made Houck's speech. Stewart 
knew every detail of the National Guard, and in executive 
work was a marvel. He thought out every preparation in 
advance and, under his guidance, a dinner party, a guber- 
natorial expedition to a Southern battlefield, or the ten 
thousand guardsmen going into camp, and all of the indi- 
viduals concerned in them, moved as smoothly in their 
places as the hands on a clock. He would have made a 
most efficient governor, but his talking in all of the cam- 
paigns wore off something of the gloss and novelty, and he 
was too true and faithful to the cause ever to be selected. 

For Good and Faithful's sure to lose 
Which way soever the game goes 

In the course of the summer I made addresses before the 
Sons of the Revolution at Neshaminy, before the graduating 
class at Franklin and Marshall College, and at the dedication 
of the monument to old John Bums on the battlefield at 
Gettysburg. At Gettysburg I said : 

We have come together upon one of the battlefields of the 
most momentous in its consequences of all the American wars. 
We meet upon the field where the issues of that war were deter- 
mined, and, with them, the fate of a great nation, and it may be 
the future of the peoples of the world for the ages yet to come. 
It is a field made famous by the sword of George Gordon Meade 
and consecrated by the words of the modern psalmist, Abraham 
Lincoln. Throughout the centuries yet to be, Americans will 
come to Gettysburg to gather inspiration for the struggles of life 
as the Greek went to Marathon, as the Briton goes to Waterloo, 
as the followers of the prophet turn to Mecca. 

20 305 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Upon the anniversary of that tremendous contest, surrounded 
on all sides by the memorials erected by a grateful people, with all 
things to suggest the more than forty thousand men who were 
here stricken, we have come to dedicate a monument to a man 
who held no rank, who wore no uniform, and who belonged to 
no army. It is a most impressive occasion. It is an event of no 
ordinary significance. It means that upon the citizen and his 
character the state rests. 

This quiet Pennsylvania town, typical in its repose, as well as 
in its strength and in its everlasting fame, of the great com- 
monwealth wherein it was fostered, had sent forth its young men 
to do battle in the cause of their country, and they were carrying 
their muskets in the Army of the Potomac. When invasion was 
threatened and the storms of war began to roll near, it con- 
tributed a company to a regiment which by a strange fatality was 
sent here and was the first force to encounter on this ground the 
Army of Lee, and when the cannon roared and muskets rattled 
through its streets, the old constable of the town, a hero of two 
earlier wars and hoary with the frosts of over seventy years, 
plunged into the fray and was thrice wounded. It was fitting that 
Pennsylvania should arise to repel the invaders. It was meet that 
at every vital point in this most fateful of contests, fought upon 
her soil, her sons should be to the fore. Happy is that land, and 
much has the future in store for it, which, when grave dangers 
threaten, can call upon young and old, soldier and citizen, to come 
to the rescue and call not in vain. While such courage and such 
virtue characterize its people it need fear neither aggression from 
abroad nor dissension at home. 

In July, along with Judge John Stewart of Franklin 
County, I inspected the tuberculosis camp at Mont Alto, 
and during the same month the quarantine station main- 
tained by the state on the Delaware. The governor is 
commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the state and 
the army consisted of the National Guard of three brigades, 
numbering about ten thousand men. The Guard is to a 
considerable extent supported by the United States under 
an act of congress which provides that it may be called into 
the national service. The money was, of course, a tempta- 
tion, but the system is wrong in principle and would never 
have been established had I been governor at the time. 
306 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

The Guard was established under Hartranft for the defense 
of the state and has been maintained by it for many years 
at great expense. Should the state ever be invaded, and the 
occasion arise for its use, it will, just when it is needed, be a 
part of the national force, subject to national control and 
perhaps called to a distant point. The nation ought to have 
been left to provide its own army and militia. The arrange- 
ment was, besides, another step in the direction of the 
obliteration of the states, a tendency which good sense will 
ever be on the watch to resist. 

In July the First Brigade went into camp at Perkasie, 
the Third Brigade at Mount Gretna, and the Second 
Brigade at Somerset. At each camp I inspected and 
reviewed the troops and lived in a tent. To me the object 
appeared to be not one of formal display, but that the 
governor should be enabled to gain a knowledge of the force 
and be in a better position to use it if need be, and in the 
meantime to provide for its wants. Therefore, I went on 
foot through the camps, looking into the tents and their 
appointments and into the kitchens. Therefore I accom- 
panied the Inspector-General, Colonel Frank G. Sweeney, 
a keen-eyed fellow, along the lines, seeing every man of the 
ten thousand, and I vied with him in the discovery of 
omitted attention to discipline. At Mount Gretna I told a 
private that he had his bayonet reversed, whereupon the 
United States Army colonel who was with the party 
declared that he knew it to be mechanically impossible. 
The colonel was shown that the thing had occurred, never- 
theless, and the story ran all over the camp. I likewise 
refused to ride a horse on review and overlooked the march- 
ing of the troops from a barouche or on foot. Stewart did 
his best to dissuade me from this step because it was an 
innovation upon which the newspapers would be sure to 
seize and he was very anxious for the welfare of his Guard. 
There were several reasons for this course. In my youth 
I had often ridden forty miles on a stretch, and in young 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

manhood had ridden at the head of my Grand Army Post 
through the streets of Philadelphia, but I had grown old 
and heavy and was unused to the exercise. There was no 
inducement for me to make a display of horserhanship. A 
man unaccustomed to the situation is more apt to be absurd, 
and when one of my predecessors fell from his horse at Potts- 
town the story went forth broadcast that he was drunk. If 
the purpose be to observe the manner in which the soldiers 
keep their lines and steps and carry themselves, nothing is 
more likely to interfere with that purpose than to be required 
to give attention to a horse made restive by the music and 
excitement. Moreover, army regulations recognize these 
facts. Marshal Bazaine reviewed his army from a barouche 
and the President of the United States reviews his army from 
a grand stand. My being on foot among the troops had 
many good results. It showed them that I was interested 
in what they were doing and willing to make the effort 
required. At Mount Gretna it was very warm. A young 
soldier standing stiff in line to be inspected plunged over on 
his face unconscious. It is not an unusual occurrence and it 
has a sort of hypnotic influence. Soon others were falling 
in various directions. The orders had been that when the 
inspection began the troops were to take the position of a 
soldier and I felt sure that the continuous rigidity of attitude 
had much to do with this effect. I then on the spot gave 
orders that until the particular line under inspection should 
be reached the troops should remain at "parade rest." 
The tension was relieved and there was no more falling. A 
correspondent of the Press, thinking it would be agreeable 
to that journal, sent to it a malicious and untruthful account 
of the occurrence, evidently so intended. I concluded to 
have him drummed out of camp to the tune of "The Rogue's 
March " and sent Colonel Walter T. Bradley after him, who 
soon returned bringing the culprit. Seeing, however, that 
he was very young and in a sad state of fright, I pointed out 
to him the impropriety of his communication and dismissed 
308 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

him. As had been expected, the newspapers in cartoons and 
editorials told the people that I was afraid to ride a horse. 
I met this proposition in my own way. At the inauguration 
of Roosevelt, I rode down Pennsylvania Avenue, in com- 
mand of a division of ten thousand men from different states, 
before a crowd of two hundred thousand people, and all 
over the country it was learned that the journals had been 
scattering false reports. They kept me, however, all the 
while playing a game in which the effort was to thwart 
the ill effects of misrepresentation upon the public 
work. To me personally it was often an interesting 
amusement. One day I sat on my porch with a reporter 
and he asked: 

''Does not this continual objurgation disturb you?" 

As it chanced there was a slight rumbling in the west 
and I replied : 

''I have often sat upon this porch when the clouds 
gathered out yonder, and presently the lightnings flashed 
and the thunders rattled until in the uproar my voice could 
not be heard. Where those storms have gone no man knows, 
and here I am sitting on this porch still, " and he was man 
enough to print the illustration. 

On the way home from Somerset, a town among the 
mountains, where the first Bible was printed west of the 
Alleghenies, where George F. Baer, the wonderfully able 
president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Com- 
pany, was born, and which has the most elevated court 
house in the state, Mrs. Pennypacker and I were taken in 
charge by Colonel Samuel Moody, a high official of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad at Pittsburgh. He was very droll, 
agreeable and entertaining. His influence with his road 
was great and he was ready to show it to us. Somerset was 
the terminus of a little single-track railroad which branched 
off from the main line. He had a car ready at Somerset, 
but, behold! it had not been dusted for a month. He kept 
us outside on some pretext while he swore at the man in 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

charge and had it cleaned. Then we went by rail to the 
station on the main line and there waited. Presently we 
heard the Chicago express, which never stopped there, but 
was to stop for us because of the influence of Moody, 
thundering in the distance. 

''Now, " said Moody, ''come outside and all be ready to 
get on." 

In an instant the train was there and in an instant later 
beyond the station and rushing to the far-away East. Then 
I roared and Moody, seldom crestfallen, was in a state of 
confusion. Presently, however, came the second section, 
which stopped, and all was well. 

Just at this juncture Judge Henry J. McCarthy died and 
this made a vacancy in the Philadelphia Court of Common 
Pleas No. 3. The leaders of the Republican party in that 
city asked for the appointment of Robert von Moschzisker, 
a bright young lawyer, formerly an assistant in the office 
of the district attorney, but lacking both years and legal 
experience, who had made himself useful and agreeable to 
Durham. I appointed George Tucker Bispham, the author 
of our leading work upon equity, and a lawyer of long and 
varied practice. He was then in Europe, but he had at one 
time made an earnest effort to reach the bench and, after 
consultation with Mr. Brinton in his office and with Lyman 
D. Gilbert, a friend and associate in many cases, who 
thought he would accept, I made the venture. My hope was, 
by a distinguished appointment, to benefit the profession, 
and that he, with such an opportunity, would feel it to be his 
duty to his profession to see that it was utilized. He failed 
me and, much to my disgust and with very poor taste, tele- 
graphed his declination not to me but to the Press. One of 
the experiences which come often to those having responsi- 
bility and seeking to do decent things is the little assistance 
given by men who are ever complaining about existing 
conditions. 

On one occasion at Harrisburg I was called up by long- 
310 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

distance telephone from Washington and Penrose at the 
other end inquired: 

''When are you going to make out the appointment of 
Dr. Shoemaker as surgeon general? " 

Shoemaker was a political doctor, continually mingling 
the two professions which did not well fit, and I had no 
confidence in him whatever. So I answered : 

"I do not think of appointing him at all." 

"Damn it to hell ! " I overheard upon the wire. 

I had written to Dr. S. Weir Mitchell and Charles C. 
Harrison to suggest to me a suitable and competent physi- 
cian for this position. They recommended Dr. Robert G. 
Le Conte, a man of professional attainment and now one of 
the trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, and I 
appointed him. He remained long enough to secure his 
title as colonel, but with the first encampment, when there 
was work to do, he resigned and that plan failed. I then 
appointed Dr. Weaver, much less showy but more stable 
and useful, and he proved to be entirely acceptable. 

There had been much adverse comment upon affairs at 
the Eastern Penitentiary, and I put at the head of it a penal 
expert from without the state, of wide reputation. He 
remained a few months and, instead of improving the insti- 
tution, used it as a means of getting a larger salary elsewhere 
and departed. Such instances, of course, went a long way to 
justify the position of the politicians. 

Theoretically the state had a navy, but it never owned 
a vessel until at this time a quarantine cutter was built for 
it by Neafie & Levy. The boat was launched September 
17th, named the "Governor Pennypacker" and was 
christened by my daughter Anna, who broke a bottle of wine 
over the bow. 

On the 22d of September, along with Elkin, I made a 
speech at Wilkes-Barre before the League of Republican 
Clubs, reviewing what had been accomplished, including 
the newspaper act. The resolutions adopted declared 

311 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

that I had proven to be "a wise, prudent, firm and consci- 
entious executive." On the invitation of ''Uncle Jerry 
Roth," an enterprising Pennsylvania Dutchman, I saw the 
Allentown Fair, generally regarded as the most successful 
agricultural fair in the state, and found thirty thousand 
people there. Colonel Henry C. Trexler, of my staff, a 
comparatively young man, who has made a great fortune in 
the manufacture of cement, having the largest cement works 
in Allentown, drove me through the country to see his large 
unfenced farms, and he entertained me at supper, where, in a 
stately home, his agreeable wife dispensed hospitality. 

On the 29th, Major General Charles Miller, in command 
of the National Guard, gave an entertainment at Franklin 
to the governor and his staff. Miller, a poor boy born in 
Alsace, came over to this country and, little by little, by 
energy, activity and business sense, combined with a canny, 
worldly wisdom, he got alongside of the Standard Oil Com- 
pany, was one of its magnates, and secured an immense 
fortune. Seldom are the fates altogether kindly to any man. 
With all his success, there was much unhappiness in his life. 
He was a captain on the staff of one of the brigadiers, was 
ambitious, made large contributions in the political cam- 
paigns, and was put in command of the Guard, over the 
heads of his general and many other officers. Elevations 
so obtained are ever more or less tottering. At Mount 
Gretna he said to me in the presence of Stewart, after 
exhibiting to us the antics of his beautiful and trained 
riding horse : 

''Governor, I am going to send down to your home one 
of the finest pair of horses to be found in the state." 

I told him this story: 

"General, when I was a boy I went to school among the 
Irish on Tunnel Hill in the town where I was born and had 
three fist fights with a boy named Bradley. Many years 
later we both drifted to Philadelphia, and I became a judge 
and he became a bartender in a liquor saloon. Much to his 
312 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

surprise and pleasure he, on one occasion, received a license 
to conduct an establishment of his own. Later, he one day- 
came to me and said he was about to send a pair of horses 
to my summer home at Moore Hall, and I said to him that 
if he did I should go into court on the following Saturday 
and revoke that liquor license." 

Neither of those pairs of horses was ever received. 

At Franklin there was a reception, a banquet and a ball. 
Everything was done upon a magnificent scale. The dec- 
orations were profuse, the ornamentations and appointments 
were costly, flowers were hurled at Mrs. Pennypacker and 
the music was lively and plentiful. In charge was Colonel 
Lewis E. Beitler, who was especially apt at that kind of 
thing and besides tall and handsome. Years before Mrs. 
Pennypacker and I had been at his wedding, and here we 
were met again. All of the members of the staff were 
gentlemen, but there were two of them especially marked by- 
gentility and nicety of conduct — Colonel Paul S. Reeves, an 
old friend of mine at Phoenixville, and Colonel Horace L. 
Haldeman of Chickies, Lancaster County, whom I had 
selected at the request of Quay. One of the satisfactions in 
being at Franklin was a call upon Christopher Heydrick, a 
long-time friend, now aged, a scion of one of the Schwenk- 
felder families of the Perkiomen Valley, who had become a 
corporation lawyer and reached the Supreme Court of the 
state. He never lost interest in the church of his fathers, 
wrote a book upon the genealogies of Schwenkf elder families, 
and was a dependence when financial assistance became 
necessary. At Erie, on the 30th, I examined affairs at the 
Soldiers' Home and made an address to the veterans there 
awaiting the end of their careers. Anthony Wajne died at 
Erie and was there buried at the block-house. Thirty years 
later his son Isaac drove across the state in a buggy, loaded 
into it the bones of his father and took them to St. David's 
at Radnor, where a monument was erected over them. Two 
or three of the fingers which he failed to find are preserved 

313 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

in a bottle (happy thought !) at the block-house where we 
saw them. We also visited the club house upon the shore, 
went out on the lake, went to the life-saving station of the 
national government and witnessed the excitement and 
intelligence of a dog which, when the rope was shot to a 
vessel supposed to be in distress on the lake, understood and 
took part in an imaginary rescue. 

Just at this time Chief Justice McCollum died and left 
a vacancy to be filled in the Supreme Court. He had had a 
run of luck. When Mitchell was nominated by the Repub- 
licans, the hopeless Democratic nomination went begging. 
Judge Arnold of Philadelphia, and others of prominence, 
refused and there was given to McCollum what no one else 
wanted. McCo Hum's home friends desired for him the state 
nomination for the Supreme Bench by the Democratic party, 
merely as a graceful way for him to retire from the common 
pleas bench of Susquehanna County. His term was about 
to expire. He was a Democrat in a strongly Republican 
county and stood no chance of re-election. His brother-in- 
law, Daniel W. Searle, would be the Republican candidate 
for the seat in the county court, for which several reasons 
McCollum did not desire a re-nomination in Susquehanna 
and what seemed then the empty honor of the Democratic 
nomination for the Supreme Bench would open a door of 
escape from a local complication. But in the midst of the 
campaign one of the seven judges died, and under the con- 
stitutional provision both Mitchell and McCollum were 
elected. Then they drew lots to determine which should 
have the long term carrying with it the right to succeed 
eventually to the chief justiceship, and McCollum won. 

On the 6th of October the Germans celebrated, in Phila- 
delphia, the two hundred and twentieth anniversary of the 
settlement of German town . I read to them my translations 
into English verse of Corinna, a love song, and another local 
bit which had been written there in the early time, which 
were of great interest. This translation, as I have already 
314 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

said, was set to music by the Orpheus Club and has 
been several times sung by that club in the Academy 
of Music. Henry Starr Richardson wrought it into a 
play of a comic character which held the boards at the 
Fellowship Club. 

On the 13th of October, Montgomery and I addressed the 
Federation of Women's Clubs at Carlisle and I read to them 
A. J. H. Duganne's inspiring and meritorious lyric upon 
Pennsylvania which has been neglected and forgotten, but 
which shall yet, Deo volente, be familiar to all of the people 
of the state. At least, it shall be drummed into their 
ears and minds so long as my voice, pen and energy are 
un weakened. 

A negro had recently been burned to death near Wil- 
mington, Delaware. A requisition was made upon me at 
this time by Governor Hunn of that state for the return of a 
negro named George White, charged with murder. The 
papers, as often happened, were in very loose shape. No 
indictment had been found and there were no affidavits as 
to the truth of the charge. The requisition stood, therefore, 
upon no foundation. The officers went home without the 
man and I wrote to Governor Hunn : 

"In view of the fact that the alleged crime committed 
by the defendant is punishable by death, I think the circum- 
stances which indicate the commission of the crime and the 
connection of the defendant with it ought to be set forth with 
particularity and care and should be accompanied by affi- 
davits as to their correctness. Especially is this true when as 
in this case no indictment has been found." 

Since there seemed to be in the suggestion a reflection 
upon the methods of the State of Delaware, there was a 
commotion there, more or less reflected in Pennsylvania. 
However, the affidavits were sent and the fugitive was sur- 
rendered. Such papers coming from the South, almost 
invariably lacked the essential requirements, showing a 
want of attention or of information. Some time afterward 

315 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

the Governor of North Carolina made a requisition for the 
return of a negro charged with murder. After an examina- 
tion of the papers, being dissatisfied with them, I required 
some further support for the charge and it led to a sharp 
correspondence. In this instance the negro was never 
returned. 

On the evening of November 5th, toward the close of a 
campaign for the election of a state treasurer and auditor 
general, I made an address to the Penrose Republican Club 
in the Eighth ward of Philadelphia, in the main commending 
political effort and pointing out to them the fact that in 
Quay, who was not present, we were fortunate in having a 
man unequaled in his line of effort anywhere else in the 
country and that it was the part of unwisdom to keep those 
capacities engaged in conflicts at home which ought to be 
utilized for our benefit in the contests of a larger sphere. 
The correctness of this line of thought, however, never made 
it palatable. 

Some time before my advent, the policy had been 
adopted by the state of erecting memorial stones to mark 
the service of its regiments upon the different battlefields 
throughout the South, and it so happened that the greater 
number of these monuments, after being erected, were 
accepted and dedicated during my administration. The 
performance of this duty took me over the South to an 
extent that under no other circumstances would have 
occurred. Early in November, accompanied by the 
adjutant general and the staff, I set out for Chattanooga, 
Tennessee, a town which during the war saw many battles 
and military movements and which since the war has 
grown to be a thriving manufacturing city. 

On the 9th of November, at Sherman Heights, in the 
presence of the surviving members of the regiment, the 
monument of the Seventy-third Pennsylvania Regiment 
was dedicated and transferred by me, representing the 
commonwealth, to General H. V. Boynton, representing 
316 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

the Chickamauga Park Commission and the nation, for 
preservation. I said: 

Ladies and Gentlemen; Comrades: 

As Chief Executive of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 
representing that great commonwealth, and as surviving soldiers 
of a war momentous in its consequences, we have come from the 
far away North to the mountains of Tennessee to assist at the 
dedication of a monument to commemorate the services of a single 
regiment upon one of the battlefields of that war. We bare our 
heads to the breezes, and our feet tread the soil of a typical 
Southern state. While we recall the events of the forty years 
ago we do not forget that earlier time, when the riflemen of these 
mountains, with a brave leader from among their own people, in 
behalf of a cause to which we too were committed, marched to 
New Orleans to deal destruction to the veterans of Wellington. 
We do not forget the three Presidents whom Tennessee gave to our 
common country or the lasting impress they made upon the devel- 
opment of our national affairs. We clasp your hands and as 
we grasp them we see all plainly that, no matter how much we 
may have differed and no matter how fiercely we may have 
contended in deadly conflict, the results of that war led neces- 
sarily to the advancement of the South as well as of the North, 
and brought all sections of the country together in a closer com- 
pact, under a firmer and more durable government. To bring 
about those results no part of the American people made greater 
efforts, endured more hardships, and submitted to more personal 
sacrifices than those who lived in the mountain regions of this 
state. What La Vendee was to the royalists of the French Revo- 
lution, Eastern Tennessee was to the cause of the Union during the 
War of 1861. No losses could appall those brave people and no 
dangers could intimidate them. The defeats of the early part 
of the war did not dismay them and the march of contending 
armies through their valleys and the terrific battles fought within 
sight of their homes only strengthened their faith. Death in its 
most terrible form confronted them and they never faltered. 
The voice of their fiery Methodist parson, as from these hill- 
tops he hurled denunciation or sang a psean of victory, 
echoed all over the United States giving heart to the timid 
and encouraging the strong. No other people hailed the final 
triumph with more pious gratitude, and their only reward 
was the consciousness of duty well performed and the satis- 

317 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

faction which came from the sense that to the end they had 
remained steadfast. 

Pennsylvania may well offer her greetings to Tennessee. 
They have had many like experiences; they have in the past 
been upon the same side in many contests, and they have had much 
in common. No other President made a more pronounced and 
indelible mark upon the events of his time than did Andrew 
Jackson, and he ever received, in all of his endeavors, the earnest 
support of the yeomanry of the Keystone State. Without her 
aid he could not have succeeded. With her support he was 
invincible. 

In the early days the thrifty Germans and the pugnacious 
Scotch-Irish from the inland counties of Pennsylvania followed 
the Cumberland VaUey into the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, 
and made their homes upon the fertile lands along its beautiful 
river. Thence, like the Boones, the Lincolns and the Todds, they 
crossed the mountains in venturesome quest to Kentucky and 
Tennessee. Many of Tennessee's soldiers who have won renown 
in the field, and many of her statesmen who have won distinction 
in the haUs of legislation look back to the land of Penn, of Wayne 
and of Meade as the home of their forefathers. 

To these great battlefields, amid your mountains, Pennsyl- 
vania sent fifteen regiments and two batteries of artillery. The 
Seventy-third Regiment, whose monument we are here to dedi- 
cate, after having fought with conspicuous valor in the East at 
Manassas, and in the Shenandoah Valley, with Hooker at 
Chancellorsville, and with Meade in the decisive battle of Gettys- 
burg, here, upon this field, after a severe struggle upon the front 
where their colonel was killed, were nearly all captured and sent 
to the prisons of Belle Isle and Libby. In commemoration of 
their faithful services and in recognition of their gallant careers 
the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has erected this monument. 
In behalf of the Commonwealth, I now accept it and transfer it to 
you (General Boynton) as the representative of the Government 
of the United States, with the full assurance that it will be main- 
tained and cherished through all time to come, and that future 
generations of Americans will here come to be reminded of the 
struggles and sacrifices of their fathers and to gather inspiration 
for future deeds of heroism and patriotism. 

It was a satisfaction to me in this speech, upon the land 
of Tennessee and in the presence of the Southern people, to 
318 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

pay my tribute to the mountaineers of East Tennessee. 
During the war they suffered the greatest of hardships and 
at its close the successful North abandoned them and almost 
at once began to turn its face in homage to the Stonewall 
Jacksons and the Lees. The speech, pointing out the 
relations between the two states and the strength of Andrew 
Jackson, was received in the best of spirit and much 
commended through the South. 

We visited the battlefields of Chattanooga, Orchard 
Knob and rode over the grounds at Chickamauga. There 
was so much breaking up of the lines at Chickamauga and 
the movements of the two armies there were so involved 
that the battle is difficult to understand. We went to the 
top of Lookout Mountain, where was fought the Battle 
above the Clouds, in a trolley car lifted almost vertically 
to the crest, an experience which has its own uncertaint'es. 
In Chattanooga we discovered a particularly attractive 
brand of sugar maple candy blended with nuts, and 
each year since Colonel Walter T. Bradley remembers 
to have a box of it sent to Pennypacker's Mills upon 
Christmas. 

From Chattanooga we went to Shiloh, in which battle 
the Seventy -seventh Pennsylvania Regiment, the only one 
from any of the Eastern states, participated on the part of 
the North. Shiloh is most difficult of access and the trip 
involved a ride upon a steamboat from John son ville of about 
one hundred and fifty miles up the Tennessee River. Shiloh 
had for me a special interest. Here Grant ventured his 
army across the river and, had it not been for the fortunate 
arrival of Buell, he would have been driven into it by the 
rebel General A. Sidney Johnston, and he and his career 
would have been closed at its very beginning. In command 
of the advance, in the "Hornets' Nest," where the fighting 
was most severe, was Major General Benjamin Mayberry 
Prentiss, whose grandmother was a Pennypacker. He and 
what was left of his division were nearly all captured. At 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

this distant point, in the wilds of the forest, twelve hundred 
miles from home, there were few of the survivors present. 

On the way home, we had to wait for an hour at Johnson- 
ville for the arrival of the train. Johnson ville had a little 
country store, a blacksmith shop, a house or two and that 
was all. After looking at the hulks of the steamboats, still 
lying in the river, where they had been burned during the 
war to save them from capture, there was absolutely nothing 
to do. I said to a lounger: 

''Is there anything to be seen in this region?" 

''Over there on the bank of the river we find Indian 
things." 

It proved to be what I had never seen before, a place 
of manufacture, and in the course of that hour I was able to 
find the whole process exemplified, including the original 
washed cobble, the chips stricken off, the fragments left, the 
core and the completed implements, together with some 
pieces of red paint with which the Indians made themselves 
handsomer. On the way home we crossed the mountains 
into North Carolina, viewing the magnificent scenery from 
a perch on the front of the engine. At Asheville we saw 
Biltmore, the summer home of the Vanderbilts, and ate a 
"possum," which was likewise a new experience added to 
life. 

On November 18th, Quay spent the night with me at the 
Executive Mansion and he remained over the next day, 
receiving people there while I was up at the department at 
work. He had visited me before at Moore Hall and at 
Pennypacker's Mills, and the effort to fathom the underlying 
impulses of a man so remarkable, was an interesting study. 
He had no presence, he had no voice, he was never impera- 
tive, and yet he molded men to his will. Durham had 
wanted to have T. Larry Eyre retained as superintendent 
ofpublic grounds and buildings, and, after another appoint- 
ment had been made, he sent a telegram to Quay which was 
regarded as offensive. Quay showed it to me and said : 
320 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

''I am done with that fellow; I shall not permit him to 
do a thing again." 

To me the quickness with which he announced a purpose 
to dismiss a man with the strength of Durham was startling. 
In this instance I threw oil on the waters and said : 

''Senator, Durham is not at all well. With all of us 
when the nerves are a little jangled and things do not come 
our way we are apt to show irritation. Durham will come 
around all right." 

The thought seemed to appeal to his sympathy and 
experience. 

On one occasion about this time there was a vacancy in 
the court of common pleas in the Twentieth Judicial Dis- 
trict, and I consulted with Quay and Penrose about it. 
Penrose urged the appointment of a man who had been 
active and useful in the politics of one of the counties. 
Then I indicated a preference for, Joseph M.Woods, a gentle- 
man and a man of good antecedents, being a descendant of 
John Witherspoon,and a lawyer of standing in the profession. 
At once Quay said : 

"Woods will be the best appointment." 

Penrose did not utter another word, but immediately 
after the interview telegraphed to Woods that he would be 
appointed. I was informed long afterward that Judge 
Woods was under the impression that he owed his appoint- 
ment to the intervention of Penrose. 

Sometimes I queried whether Quay ever tried to influence 
the men around him, whether he was even fully aware that 
he was influencing them, whether he did anything more 
than, seeing clearly what the situation required, indicate his 
line of thought, with the result that they, after pondering, 
saw that he was correct. At all events, he made no apparent 
effort. He was, of course, helped by the fact that his success 
in many contests made men feel that he was probably 
correct, especially since often he had information outside of 
their ken. Sometimes, where I have differed with him, I 
21 321 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

have later found myself doubting whether, after all, I was not 
mistaken. His sympathies were quickly aroused and there 
never was a man more of whose actions were determined by 
altruistic sentiment. One secret of his success was no 
doubt the fact that he felt and manifested a genuine inter- 
est in the welfare of others. He helped the Indians and 
became a chief among them, not for what they could do, but 
because he felt an interest in them. On this evening he 
talked to me about the matter, as an interesting fact, that 
we two descendants of Major Patrick Anderson, of the 
Revolutionary Army, were at the same time senator and 
governor. He told me at length of his plans to remove the 
bones of his grandmother from Ohio, where she had been 
buried, to the Anderson family yard in Chester County. 
It seems the old woman had expressed the desire to be buried 
among her kindred, but at the time of her death those around 
her were too poor to comply, and he carried out the wish of 
this long-dead woman. He talked to me of his son "Dick, " 
with apparent regret that he was nothing of a politician 
and only a maker of money, in which pursuit he was fortu- 
nate. What seemed to me remarkable, I found in him a 
strong vein of superstition, that kind of fatalism which gave 
Napoleon faith in his star and which made Jacob Boehm, 
the shoemaker of Goerlitz, so sure of his inspiration. We 
even talked of ghosts, and I was astonished to hear him say 
in all soberness : 

''Lately I was sitting in my library and out of the dark- 
ness a woman in white loomed up before me. I knew right 
well who she was and what she wanted." 

I should have been glad to have pursued the subject 
further, but it was too delicate and I waited, but he said no 
more. 

Then we talked over the vacancy in the Supreme Court. 
I had thought over the matter seriously and had prepared a 
list of six men whom I regarded as the most eligible pro- 
fessionally. At its head was Charles E. Rice, President 
322 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

Judge of the Superior Court, and on it were Mayer Sulz- 
berger, David T. Watson, a Democrat, Lyman D. Gilbert 
and Judge John A. Mcllvaine of Washington County, of 
whom the justices of the Supreme Court held a high opinion. 
He looked it over and said : 

"I do not want Rice. If you appoint him I shall have 
to oppose him myself in the convention. He is one of those 
Yankees from around Wilkes-Barre, and you cannot trust 
one of them." 

I said : 

"Senator, if you are opposed to him, I shall not appoint 
him." 

During the conversation he said to me : 

"It would be a gracious thing upon your part to appoint 
John P. Elkin." 

"It would be too plain, and, since Elkin has been rejected 
for the governorship, I do not think I could put him on the 
Supreme Court." 

Presently he said : 

"I will send tomorrow for Lyman D. Gilbert." 

This interview with Gilbert occurred in the mansion in 
my absence. He was not prone to giving unnecessary confi- 
dence and what then occurred neither he nor Gilbert ever 
informed me. I saw him later and this was his suggestion : 

" McCollum was a Democrat. There is no other Demo- 
crat on that Bench. How would it do to appoint Sam 
Thompson?" 

Samuel G. Thompson was the son of a former chief 
justice, he had himself served a brief term on the Supreme 
Court with satisfaction to everybody, and he had a large 
practice in Philadelphia and was conceded to be an able 
lawyer. From the professional point of view no better 
solution could have been found and it was accompanied 
with a concession to the proprieties. With very little hesi- 
tation I appointed Thompson. These are the exact facts. 
What were the motives of Quay anybody may amuse him- 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

self by trying to conjecture. He may have wanted to 
escape from my power to name the permanent occupant 
by having me make an appointment in its nature temporary. 
It is certain that he had the purpose of putting me on the 
Supreme Court, sooner or later. He may even have con- 
sidered the nomination of Elkin and thus disposing of a 
formidable rival, or he may have retained all of these pur- 
poses in mind as possibilities. It seldom happens that men 
are able to analyze even their own motives correctly. 

At this interview he suggested the probability that 
Thompson would be content with a term of thirteen months 
and that it might open a way for my own nomination. I 
wrote to him November 26th : 

I have appointed the Honorable Samuel Gustine Thompson a 
judge of the Supreme Court. As you are aware, you have sug- 
gested to me the probability of my own nomination for that office 
by the approaching Convention of the Republican Party. 
Though that position would be entirely agreeable to me, you 
will perhaps pardon me for saying that I doubt the wisdom of 
such a course of action from your point of view of responsibility 
for the outcome of the party deliberations. I write this letter to 
say that should you find the difficulties greater than you supposed, 
or should you become convinced that this course is not suitable or 
feasible, you need not feel in the least embarrassed by the fact 
that you have made the suggestion. 

November 24th, at the Hotel Schenley, at Pittsburgh, 
along with Judge BuflSngton, United States Senator J. B. 
Foraker and others, I spoke to over two hundred of the 
city's wealthy men and expressed a pet thought. 

''What has occurred in New York when she recently 
absorbed Brooklyn, what has occurred in Chicago when 
she took into her embrace the whole of Cooke County, must 
inevitably happen to Pittsburgh. Sitting at the head of 
the Ohio with her iron and coal, she is to become the 
foremost of all the inland American cities," 

On the 28th I spoke at the Founders' Day dinner at The 
324 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

Union League in Philadelphia, where were Admirals 
Dewey, Higsbee and Melville and Generals Young, 
Bates, Brooke and Gregg and Governor Frank S. Black of 
New York. 

I had now been governor for nearly a year and the 
newspaper act had been on the statute books for over six 
months, and up to this time no attack had been made 
impugning my integrity. This final step on the downward 
path to Avernus was now taken by the Philadelphia Record. 
One day I was at the rooms of the Historical Society of 
Pennsylvania when a man appeared who said he had been 
sent by the Record to show me a paper, and he asked me to 
read it. The paper purported to be signed by "A Lawyer" 
and it set forth 'Hhat Governor Pennypacker's appointment 
of Judge Thompson was prompted wholly by the selfish 
desire and indecent purpose of Governor Pennypacker to 
get the place for himself as soon as he can," and "He, 
therefore, stooped to a plot that is absolutely without 
precedent or parallel in all the history of intrigue and cor- 
ruption in Pennsylvania politics." I read the paper over 
and handed it back to him. 

''What are you going to do about it?" he inquired. He 
said nothing about money, but I inferred that was what he 
meant. Angry, I looked him in the eyes and said : 

''I am not going to do anything about it." 

"Then we will print it." 

"Why do you tell me what you are going to print. I 
have no responsibility for what you print. That is your 
responsibility." 

The next day the Record, then edited by Theodore 
Wright, printed the communication with an editorial headed 
"A Foul Conspiracy," and saying: 

"It lays bare a plot to swap the governorship for a seat 
on the bench of the Supreme Court, as if the two highest 
offices in the gift of the people could be bartered or bought 
and sold with the indifferent regard for popular opinion or 

325 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

popular right that might be expected of jockeys making a 
horse trade." 

A few years later the Record saw Woodrow Wilson swap 
the governorship of New Jersey for another high office, and 
use the office, neglecting its duties, to accomplish the result 
and supported the effort as a delectable proposition. There 
was this dfference : Wilson did what the Record only said 
that I intended to do, and in making the statement it was 
mistaken. Looking at the matter with deeper insight, 
testing it ethically, and assuming the facts to be true, as 
they were not, the accusation of the lawyer, if he was a 
lawyer, and of the Record was silly. In appointing a thor- 
oughly competent judge I had performed my only duty to 
the court and nobody had any right to ask anything more so 
far as the court was concerned. It was no case of barter 
or buying and selling with Thompson because, according 
to the story, he knew nothing about it, and beside had 
nothing to give. It was no case of selling to Quay because 
he got neither office. It would not be a nice thing for me 
to appoint a good judge simply upon the hope of helping 
myself, but that involves questions of propriety, not of 
integrity, and there are few people who rise to such heights. 

I had no intention of permitting talk to go on as though 
some wicked thing were being done in secret, and the next 
day I wrote to the Ledger: 

I have carefully read the wanton attack upon myself in yester- 
day's Record, to see whether there could be any possible justifica- 
tion for it except a wish to excel in newspaper enterprise. I may 
be wrong but it seems to me there is no principle of ethics which 
would prevent me from going before the next Republican State 
Convention as a candidate for the Supreme Court, or from asking 
the support of Mr. Quay or anyone else who may have influence, 
provided I do not use the power of the governor for that purpose. 
If I chose to take this course, I should not hesitate in order to 
escape illogical comment. As a matter of fact I have not asked 
any person who may be a delegate to that convention, or any one 
who may have weight in its deliberations, to do anything whatever 
326 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

in connection with it and do not expect to do so in the future. As 
governor I have refrained from efforts to influence political 
movements. 

In the appointment of judges I have endeavored to do my 
full duty to the courts and in each instance, save in the selection 
of Mr. Bispham, have ascertained and given due weight to the 
views of the court most concerned. In appointing Mr, Thompson 
I have indicated so plainly, that even the blind may see, my 
opinion as to the kind of man who ought to be placed in that 
position. I have given him a term of thirteen months, all that I 
had to give, and only folly or malevolence could ask me for more. 

If, however, as the Record predicts, the Republican State 
Convention should see fit in its wisdom to nominate me for the 
Supreme Court and that should be followed by an election, I shall 
return to the bench. 

This letter told the exact truth and in effect declared 
to any one, skilled in the language, that I did not intend 
to be a candidate. It asserted my right to go before the 
convention and solicit help in any direction and affirmed 
that I had not so done and did not intend so to do ; in other 
words, that I was not doing the things I would have done 
had I purposed to be a candidate. If, notwithstanding, the 
party should nominate me and the people elect me, as the 
newspaper asserted, then I would return to the bench. It 
would in that event be a duty. Nothing could have been 
straighter. It was likewise a defiance and intended to be a 
defiance. Should I choose to be a candidate, and should I 
choose to ask Quay to help me, then it asserted I would do it 
in utter disregard of what might be published in the news- 
papers. Again did the heathen rage, and again the car- 
toonists earned their hire. That a man should be so con- 
structed as to act decently in a matter concerning his own 
interests was not to be conceived, and one who was willing 
to go to the Supreme Court must necessarily be taking all 
sorts of underhand measures in order to get there. 

Quay thought my letter to be wretched politics, but there 
were some things more important to me than either office, 

327 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

and we were not viewing the subject from the same angle. 
And I still think it was good politics, since it did away 
with all talk about secret plotting. On the 12th of Decem- 
ber I was the guest of honor at the dinner of the Pennsyl- 
vania Society of New York, a most successful society, the 
active spirit in which is Barr Ferree, and there I met Gov- 
ernor Odell of New York and Governor Edwin Warfield of 
Maryland. 

At the urgent request of Provost Harrison of the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania, I left my work and went down to 
Washington in order to secure Roosevelt as the orator for 
the following 22d of February ceremonies in the Academy 
of Music. Quay had promised to help me. He met me 
with his carriage at the depot and entertained me at his 
home. The following day, through his arrangement, we 
lunched with the President and Mrs. Roosevelt at the White 
House. The details of this luncheon are given elsewhere 
in my personal sketch of the President. On this occasion 
Quay brought up the subject of the nomination for the 
Supreme Court and I told him I had given up all thought 
of being a candidate. The reasons which influenced me 
were: 

I had taken with me to Harrisburg a number of gentle- 
men who never would have entered this kind of life but for 
me, and to abandon them to the mercies of political chance, 
almost at the outset, would have been to have treated them 
unfairly. I had taken the responsibility of leaving the 
judgeship behind me when I became governor, the things 
I had hoped to do were still in large part not accomplished, 
and to leave the wheel now for the sake of comfort would be 
pure vacillation and weakness. 

In a column on the front page, the Ledger, December 
24th, explained to its readers the purpose of my visit to 
Washington, with the staring headline: ''Why Did Penny- 
packer Go to Washington?" in this way: 

''A sensation is due which will recall and perhaps sur- 
328 



GOVERNOR, 1903 

pass the notorious troubles that arose when Blake Walters 
was cashier of the Pennsylvania State Treasury from 1878 
to 1880 and party leaders were accused of having been 
accommodated with state funds to use in speculation." 

With this illustration of the reckless wickedness of the 
most decent of the Philadelphia newspapers in my time, 
ready to harm, without information and without inquiry, 
the record of my first year as governor closes. 



329 



CHAPTER XI 
Governor, 1904 

EARLY in January of 1904 the Board of Pardons 
recommended to me the pardon of Alphonse F. 
Cutaiar, who had been convicted of murder in 
the first degree and sentenced to be hanged, but 
whose sentence was subsequently commuted to imprison- 
ment for life. His pardon had been asked for by forty- 
four clergymen, twenty-two members of the legislature, 
a mayor of Philadelphia, a senator of the United States 
and two hundred and nine other citizens. The murder 
was accompanied with some of the most dramatic features 
in the annals of crime. James E. Logue was one of the 
most famous professional burglars of his day and, as a 
result of his skill, he owned a house No. 1250 North Eleventh 
Street, in the City of Philadelphia, where, in his absence 
in the pursuit of his profession, lived his wife, Johannah, 
dressed in silks and adorned with jewelry and diamonds. 
In the house also lived Cutaiar, a nephew, who there con- 
ducted the trade of a barber. On the 22d of February, 
1879, Logue had gone to a distant city upon a professional 
engagement, and his wife, who had been drinking to some 
extent, was seen in the house at 8 p. m. She had on her 
person diamond earrings worth $250, a diamond finger 
ring worth $80, a plain ring with the letters ''J. L. to J. L." 
inscribed on it and, two days before, her husband had 
given her a hundred dollars in cash and four $1,000 coupon 
bonds. She was seen no more. A short time afterward 
Cutaiar married, and his young wife, brought into the 
kitchen, complained of a stench there which he attributed 
to dead rats. Logue employed detectives and spent con- 
siderable money in advertising and search, but in vain, and 
330 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

in time the disappearance of his wife was forgotten. In 
1895, after the lapse of sixteen years, the house was sold. 
The purchaser, wanting to make repairs, removed the floor 
of the kitchen and underneath were the bones of Johannah 
Logue, with the remains of her caba and clothing and the 
plain gold ring on her finger. All of the articles of value 
which she had possessed were missing. Because of his 
evil reputation and calling, suspicion was directed toward 
Logue, but he was able to give a conclusive proof of his 
absence. Then Cutaiar was arrested. On the trial he 
was defended by Hampton L. Carson, who afterwards 
became my able attorney general, and he did all that 
could be done for his cause, but he was convicted. He 
made three statements. 

The first, April 14, 1895, would, if believed, have resulted 
in the hanging of Logue. It was to the effect that Logue 
had been jealous of his wife, employed a young man to 
tempt her, that in New York he beat and choked her until 
she fell dead, that he sent the body in a trunk and when 
no one was about put it under the kitchen floor, all of 
which he had confessed to Cutaiar. 

The second statement made in writing April 17th was 
that she came to the house drunk and had to go to New 
York that night; that he, Cutaiar, helped her up to her 
room and there tied her hands and feet fast with a piece 
of rope while she was unconscious, so that she could not 
go out and get more to drink; that he went up again to 
her room later in the evening and found her dead; that 
he put the body on the floor of another room and went 
back to his work; that when Logue returned Logue took 
the watch, earrings and pin, and that at Logue's suggestion 
they two put her under the floor. 

The third statement, made the same day, was that 
Logue had nothing to do with the matter, that he alone 
put the body under the floor, and that he took the diamonds 
and watch and threw them into the river. 

331 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

After a careful reading of the testimony, I wrote an 
opinion refusing the pardon and saying: 

The human mind is so constituted that in its narrations it 
depends rather upon memory than imagination. All false state- 
ments are apt to have much truth blended with them to make 
them credible. Even novels, which are admittedly works of 
imagination, describe real persons, scenes and incidents. When 
Cutaiar told the false story concerning Logue he described a 
death caused by no weapon. The jury may not have been far 
from the truth if they came to the conclusion that when he said: 
"He began beating her. He struck her on the side of the face 
with one hand and on the other side of the face with his fist, and 
than choked her until she fell on the floor, from which she never 
recovered," and continued: "her face was all kind of black and 
her eyes bulging and staring-like and open-like, she had suffo- 
cated," he was describing events and conditions he had actually 
seen. 

I entertained not the slightest doubt that it was a brutal 
murder for money. Some months afterward I made an 
inspection of the Eastern Penitentiary and, when it had 
been completed, the warden took me to some of the cells 
to see the inmates. He unlocked a door and disclosed two 
cells, an outer and an inner, the latter reached through a 
door so low that a man entering would have to stoop. 
On invitation I stepped inside, leaving the warden in the 
corridor. Inside, a man perhaps fifty years of age, with 
light hair, blue eyes and sandy complexion smilingly greeted 
me and asked me to look at the shop where he did his work 
as a shoemaker. I stooped and entered the inner com- 
partment and he followed and stood at the door. The 
sharpened shoemaker's knife with which he cut the leather 
lay on the table within his easy reach. Then his smile 
ceased, he looked me in the face and said: 

"I am Cutaiar." 

He was the murderer whose pardon I had refused. 
On the instant there flashed across my mind that dramatic 
scene in Victor Hugo's novel Quatre — vingt — treize, where 
332 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

the captain, being rowed by a volunteer on a dangerous 
trip across a rough sea, saw the man suddenly drop his 
oars and on inquiring the reason was answered: ''I am 
the brother of the man you had shot yesterday." I quietly 
and blandly made my way out of the cell with the feeling 
that the warden had shown little judgment. 

Strange to say, I some time afterward came into the 
possession of a letter written to a lady at Bryn Mawr by 
Cutaiar in which he described the same scene. In it he 
said: 

I know it will surprise you very much to learn that I received 
a visit from no less a personage than the Governor of Pennsyl- 
vania, ... I invited him into my cell and into my workshop in 
the rear of the cell. . . . We were alone for several minutes, 
except for one of the inmates, who stood at some distance, and 
this inmate tells me that the governor did not seem to pay any 
attention to the patterns but kept looking into my face as I was 
turned to one side. 

The Chief Justice wrote to me : 

My dear Governor: 

I have read you memm. on the Cutaiar case with very great 
satisfaction. The most discreditable feature in the administra- 
tion of justice in Pennsylvania is the reckless abuse of the par- 
doning power by the Board of Pardons and especially its more or 
less open assumption to re-try questions of fact and of law after 
juries and courts have passed upon them in the due and regular 
course of law. I am more than pleased to have at last a governor 
who does not feel bound to acquiesce tamely in whatever recom- 
mendation that irresponsible board may make, but who exam- 
ines and decides the cases for himself. As a lawyer, a judge and 
a responsible executive, you have set a precedent which ought to 
be followed. 

Very sincerely yours, 

James T. Mitchell. 

After I came away the efforts in behalf of a pardon for 
Cutaiar were renewed and were finally successful. Think- 
ing that perhaps I would interfere, his wife, from a respect- 

333 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

able family in New Jersey, and his daughter, an agreeable 
looking girl, came to see me, but I told them my respon- 
sibility was over and that I would in no way interpose. 
One day this letter came to me : 

Lebanon, 3/24/1903. 
Hon. Governor Pennypacker, 

Dear Sir: Having been found guilty of murder 1st degree 
in last terra Oyer & Terminer Courts, March Session, 1903, 
knowing I have done deed in cold blood and my punishment 
death, I humbly ask your favor to speed execution. I see no 
reason why man should be made wait knowing it must come 
sooner or later. I have fully reconciled myself to my fate and 
again ask you speed in execution. Hoping you will grant my 
last favor on earth, I remain 

Your humble servant as long as 
Life shall last, 

David Shaud. 

Surely a more remarkable communication was never 
written. I had the matter examined and this was the 
solution. A zealous preacher had wrestled with him and 
succeeded in converting him. Uncertain, however, about 
a relapse, and, feeling that it was unwise to take chances, 
he prevailed upon the convict to write the letter to me. 
The case took its regular course. 

Who was" A Lawyer" who wrote the letter to the Record, 
before mentioned, I never learned. It is a law of nature 
that most of the mischief that besets our lives is done in 
secret. It is the habit of both the hyenas and the bed- 
bugs to prowl in the night. The germs of typhoid fever 
and cholera perish when the sunlight is turned on them. 
I was told, however, that the letter came from an organi- 
zation calling itself "The Yellow Cats," having its lair in 
Lancaster County, of which Justice J. Hay Brown was a 
member. 

Some days after my return from Washington, there 
came to me the following paper which had been circulated 
for signatures among the members of the Philadelphia Bar: 
334 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

Philadelphia, 
December 18th, 1903. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, Governor. 

Sir : As old friends, neighbors and professional associates, we feel 
in the present situation we should submit for your consideration 
our views in regard to your letter announcing your intention of 
accepting the nomination of the next Republican State Conven- 
tion to the office of associate justice of the Supreme Court of 
of Pennsylvania, should it be tendered you. It is unnecessary 
to dwell upon the calamity of an impairment of public respect 
for that tribunal nor upon our deep professional solicitude in that 
regard, knowing that you are in full sympathy therewith. Nor 
do we concern ourselves with the political aspects of matters nor 
with the loss to the commonwealth of your services as governor. 
We present our views simply as lawyers jealous of the honor of 
our profession. The announcement of your candidacy, immedi- 
ately after the appointment of a Democrat to the office of asso- 
ciate justice of the Supreme Court is accepted by the people of 
Pennsylvania as conclusive proof that a seat on the Supreme 
Bench has been made the subject of a political arrangement, and 
that your choice was not governed by considerations of fitness 
for the office, but by the purpose to secure the place for yourself. 
We do not think for a moment that you would knowingly enter 
into any such barter, but for the chief executive of the state to 
seek the assistance of influential politicians for a transfer to the 
Bench, even if coupled with the promise not to use the power of 
the office to that end, must be regarded as an impropriety. 

It is impossible in the nature of things that the mere knowl- 
edge that such a wish is cherished should not operate as official 
pressure; and the influence of the office, direct and indirect, and 
all the power of those hoping to profit by the change, would com- 
bine for its accomplishment. 

Even though these views may be mistaken, yet we think the 
precedent a most evil one, which may be followed hereafter by 
officials less trustworthy. 

It is in view of the mischiefs which may follow and of the 
possible impairment of the confidence of the people of Penn- 
sylvania in their highest court that we feel constrained to present 
this remonstrance. We beg to assure you that, not only do we 
cordially sympathize with you in your desire to return to the 
Bench, for we should have been glad under any other circum- 
stances to join in furthering your wishes, but we are unable to 
do so now, as we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that, if you 

335 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

become an associate justice of the Supreme Court in the manner 
proposed, you will forfeit a large share of the respect and esteem 
of the profession and weaken the faith of the people in the dis- 
interested administration of justice. 

We do, therefore, most respectfully but earnestly entreat you 
to reconsider your avowed intention, and to continue to the 
expiration of your term of office as governor to safeguard and 
protect the interests of the people of this great commonwealth, 
to whose honor and welfare we know you are sincerely devoted. 

We remain, with great respect and cordial personal regards, 
Your obedient servants. 



Samuel Dickson 
William S. Price 
Henry R. Edmunds 
John R. Read 
John Marshall Gest 
John Hampton Barnes 
Dimner Beeber 
J. Levering Jones 
Francis Rawle 
Charles C. Townsend 
J. B. Townsend, Jr. 
Russell Duane 
George S. Graham 
George Wharton Pepper 
Frank M. Riter 
C. Berkeley Taylor 
J. Percy Keating 
Albert B. Weimer 
John J. Ridgway 
Charles Biddle 
William Drayton 



J. I. Clark Hare 
M. Hampton Todd 
Thomas Leaming 
John Cadwalader 
William H. Staake 
G. Heide Norris 
Joseph de F. Junkin 
Richard C. Dale 
Henry Budd 
John G. Johnson 
Frank P. Prichard 
Wm. Righter Fisher 
Edward W. Magill 
N. Dubois Miller 
John Douglass Brown 
Wm. Rotch Wister 
Walter George Smith 
Theodore M. Etting 
Sussex D. Davis 
J. Rodman Paul 
Wm. Rudolph Smith 



W. W. Montgomery 



Nothing that occurred during my whole term gave me 
so much pain as this communication. It w^as a revelation. 
These gentlem.en had seen me tested for fourteen years, 
and yet, while asserting their favorable experience, were 
unwilling to trust me to determine a question of profes- 
sional propriety. They were ready to believe an anonymous 
correspondent of a partisan sheet and to treat as naught 
336 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

their own experience. Many of them, including Dickson, 
had privately told me of their approval of my course with 
the newspapers. W. Righter Fisher had read law in my 
office. And yet, when the inevitable war followed, they 
deserted to the enemy almost at the first fire. It was a 
warning to me that in the trials of life it is unsafe to rely 
even upon friendship, upon long association, upon the 
judgment of men accustomed to reason. It was a justi- 
fication of Warren in his dread of the North American. 

The singular weakness of the document, the fact that 
the question they raised had already been determined 
in a way contrary to their thought was of little moment. 
The fact stared me in the face that, so far as they were 
concerned, I was left to fight my battles as I might alone. 
With respect to its contents, there is only need to point 
out that my letter to the Ledger did not announce an ''inten- 
tion of accepting the nomination," that it did not announce 
a ''candidacy" and that it did not express a "desire to 
return to the Bench." These were only the mistaken 
newspaper interpretations, and the word "barter" was 
taken from the editorial of the Record, with that journal's 
unsound analysis of its own assumed facts. The standard 
of ethics which it was suggested that I ought to maintain, 
i. e.,"that the mere knowledge that such a wish is cherished " 
operates "as official pressure" and, therefore, that I ought 
not to entertain such a wish, is an impossible standard. 
A few years later Charles E. Hughes went from the governor- 
ship of New York to the Supreme Court of the United 
States and not one of these friends of mine made a whimper 
about the possible impairment of the confidence of the 
people in the court. Moreover, my letter expressed no 
such wish. If their statement that they would be glad 
"under other circumstances" to further my wishes was 
intended as an implied promise, then I never heard that 
any one of them endeavored to carry it into effect. To 
do what they evidently wanted me to do, and to decline 
22 337 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

in advance a nomination which might never be tendered, 
would have been, had I comphed, to have placed myself 
in a preposterous position. Carson, who, alone with Quay, 
knew of the conclusion I had reached, agreed with me that 
they had no right whatever to force from me a declaration 
of purpose. My answer ran: 

Gentlemen : 

I much appreciate the kindly feeling which pervades your 
letter. Its main effect has been to sadden me. If you do not 
care to judge me by the acts of my judicial and gubernatorial 
life, and you feel that past conduct is not a safe guide by which 
to determine what may be done in the future, I may at least ask 
you to suspend all inferences until the facts are disclosed. 

Sincerely yours, 

Samuel W. Pennypacker. 

This ought to have been enough, for a man with his 
eyes open, to have given a cue, but it was not, and they 
went along, printed their Round Robin and helped the 
newspapers in their futile campaign. The next step soon 
followed. J. Hay Brown so far forgot his obligations as 
to give to the North American an interview in which he said : 

"I cannot say more than that the Bench ever relies 
upon the Bar to sustain and protect it, and I have faith 
to believe that the lawyers of the state, and the people 
who are their clients, will deliver it from what the press, 
in reflecting the sentiment of all decent people, justly 
regards as the governor's menace to its safety." 

Here was presented a fine opportunity for Mr. Dickson, 
Mr. Johnson and Mr. Graham. A justice of the highest 
court, from the bench, by a publication in a discreditable 
sheet, sought openly to affect the action of the convention 
of a political party. With what effect, assured that they 
stood upon safe ground, could they have discanted upon 
the ''impairment of public respect for that tribunal!" But 
it passed as a neglected opportunity. 

Quay, broken in health, was in Florida. He was not 
338 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

quite satisfied with my determination of the matter and 
scolded over it. I believe that he knew that he would soon 
die and that he wanted what he regarded as an obligation 
he had undertaken in my interest to be assured while 
there was time. He wrote asking me if my mind was fully 
made up and advising that in that event no intimation 
of the purpose be given until the meeting of the convention. 
No doubt his plans would be helped by such silence. While 
Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart were yelping upon the 
wrong trail the real game was safe in its covert. 
I wrote to him February 19, 1904: 

Dear Senator: 

Of course the public talk has made all of the men about me 
uneasy concerning their positions and naturally they want me to 
remain. As I told you in Washington, I have definitely given up 
all thought of going to the Supreme Court at this time. The 
bar are against it and the better class of people feel that it would 
be a desertion of my present office and duties. It would give 
a vantage ground of opposition to the ticket and perhaps endanger 
senators and representatives. It would be discussed in such a 
way as to be injurious to the court, and I am under obligations 
not to harm either party or court. Most of the satisfaction of 
being a member of the court would disappear if I felt I went 
there without professional approval. If the party people in 
Philadelphia have plans they want to accomplish they may feel 
assured that while I am here they will receive fair consideration. 
If matters run along as they are now, without my speaking until 
the meeting of the convention, and then some one else is nom- 
inated, it will be said you have wisely curbed my ambition, and 
I shall be entirely content. I owe you much anyhow. And if 
this be the last opportunity, very well. You will never hear me 
complain. 

At this juncture, when a committee with Dickson as 
chairman, and Dimner Beeber and Alexander Simpson, 
Jr., as secretaries, was endeavoring to arouse the lawyers 
of the state in support of the newspaper crusade, Quay 
appeared on the scene in a new r61e. From St. Lucie, in 
Florida, he issued this proclamation : 

339 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

To the Republicans in Pennsylvania: 

It may now be taken for granted that Governor Pennypacker 
will say nothing publicly upon the proposition that the Republican 
party shall nominate and elect him to the Supreme Court judge- 
ship. But something should be said by some one to wash away 
the existing misrepresentation. I am fully informed, better 
informed than Governor Pennypacker, of the facts surrounding 
the propostion, and in view of the recent publications, anonymous 
and judicial, it seems to be proper that they should be enlightened. 
Their criticisms upon the Governor are unwarranted. The 
accusations of Mr. Justice Brown and the anonymous writers in 
his train are malicious and mendacious. 

Governor Pennypacker never was, and is not now, a candi- 
date for the Republican nomination for the Supreme Court. 
He has not sought, nor will he seek, that nomination. He has 
not signified that he will accept it if tendered to him, and if he is 
wise he will keep his counsel upon that question. If he declines, 
his enemies will say, some of them, that they have driven him 
from the field ; others that he is declining a nomination which was 
never tendered and is not accessible; if he says he will accept, 
and the convention should fail to give him its suffrage, the situa- 
tion would be still more disagreeable. 

The documents in the case are few, an anonymous letter to 
the Philadelphia Record, a Democratic nev/spaper; an anonymous 
letter to the Philadelphia Press, and an interview from Judge 
Brown in the guise of Magister Morum of the Bench and Bar. 
The letter in the Record confines itself to two allegations: First, 
that the appointment of Mr. Justice Samuel Gustine Thompson 
was made in order that Governor Pennypacker should secure the 
judgeship for himself as soon as he can. This is false. The 
anonymous writer says he knows it to be a fact. Let him pro- 
duce the evidence. Second, that Governor Pennypacker con- 
spired with Senator Quay to trade two years of his term as gover- 
nor for twenty-one years' term on the Supreme Court Bench. 
This is also false. If it is true let the anonymous writer produce 
the evidence of its truth. 

The letter to the Press is devoted to the proposed appointment 
of Lyman D. Gilbert. Judge Weiss of Harrisburg and Mr. 
Gilbert both know that the statements of the Press writer are 
false. These are practically: 

First, that the Governor sought to dicker or trade with Mr. 
Gilbert to attain the high office of Supreme Justice. This is 
false. Even if the Governor were disposed to dicker, Mr. Gilbert 
340 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

had nothing to dehver. I cannot imagine any action of Mr. 
Gilbert in the connection discussed that could prevent or promote 
the nomination or election of Governor Pennypacker. If the 
vacancy were a factor in results, it would only be necessary to 
leave it open until the Republican Convention met. Here again 
the anonymous writer must produce his evidence or stand 
convicted. 

Second, that a conference was held at the Executive Mansion, 
after which Mr. Gilbert was told that he would be appointed to 
the vacant judgeship if he would agree not to be a candidate for 
the nomination, and that if Lieutenant Governor Brown became 
governor he would appoint Gilbert attorney general. This is 
also false. If it is true let the anonymous gentleman produce 
his evidence. 

Third, that he was told Judge Thompson or D. T. Watson 
would be appointed if he, Gilbert, did not accept. This is false, 
as is the inference that Lieutenant Governor Brown was a party. 
If true, let us have the evidence. 

This is the substance of all the charges against Governor 
Pennypacker in this connection. I declare them false, and the 
anonymous correspondents of the Press and Record and Mr. 
Justice Brown must establish their case by evidence or stand con- 
victed libelers. To use a homely but apposite expression, they 
must "put up or shut up." When they attempt to "put up," 
I will have something to say, more in detail. In the meantime, 
as the Record declares its correspondent "high and reputable" 
and the Press declares its correspondent "high and responsible," 
it would be fair for their "high" writers to take off their masks 
and show their faces to the people of the state whose governor 
they traduce. 

Only an extract from the interview of Justice Brown has 
penetrated here, but newspaper comments indicate that he has 
descended from his judicial perch to snarl at Governor Penny- 
packer in obedience to a call upon him to interfere for the pro- 
tection of the Bench, which he declares is menaced. He is cer- 
tainly answering a call intended for some one else. There is no 
reason within my recollection why the Bench should distinguish 
him as its special representative to prevent our chief executive 
from passing between the wind and their nobility. He was nom- 
inated and elected, as Governor Pennypacker will be nominated 
and elected if at all, by a Republican State Convention and the 
Republicans of the state. Even in his case there were evil- 
disposed persons who said that he was not selected for pre- 

341 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

eminent qualifications, nor in obedience to the clamorous 
demands of the people, but that he was, so to speak, taken by the 
scruff of the neck and the seat of his inexpressibles by a friend or 
two and catapulted over the sacred pole which divides the 
Supreme Court from common mortals. Yet the Bench did not 
regard his unconventional entrance as a menace to its safety, 
nor when Justice Potter was appointed by his business partner 
to his high position did the Supreme Court flee in terror at his 
unceremonious entrance. On the contrary, he was deservedly 
popular. Every member of that court has gone upon the Bench, 
as the governor may go on it, by a nomination and election by 
his party. Every one of them was desirous and has endeavored 
to get there, and they were sent there to judicially administer 
justice, not to trail their gowns in the gutters of politics and to 
dictate the nomination and election of their associates. This, 
in my opinion, is the sentiment of the people in this contention 
of Justice Brown. If he is of a contrary opinion, let him resign 
his judgeship and go before the next Republican State Conven- 
tion and before the people and test the question. He will be 
wiser afterward, and I can assure him the convention will be no 
more of a machine-made convention than the similar bodies which 
nominated him and his associates to their present positions. 
Were it not that Justice Brown in his interviews fences me, in 
common with many hundreds of Republicans in Pennsylvania 
outside of the fellowship of "decent people," I might enter upon 
the ethics of the situation and the delicacies that accompany the 
high place he occupies. There is certainly a question whether 
the people have a right to take an officer from a place to which 
they have called him and command him to another. There is 
also a question whether, granted the right to take a judge from 
the court of common pleas and place him in the Supreme or 
Superior Court, the principle will not apply in the case of a gov- 
ernor and whether the acceptance of his office by a governor creates 
an implied contract with the people that he shall fill his allotted 
term, any more than does the acceptance of his office by a com- 
mon pleas judge. This is pertinent, for five of the present 
members of the Supreme Court were elevated from the com- 
mon pleas bench. But, I leave those matters for solution to the 
"decent people." I have received but one letter from a judicial 
ofiicer upon the Pennypacker controversy. It was from Judge 
Brown. 

M. S. Quay. 
St. Lucie, Florida, Feb. 13, 1904. 
342 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

This open letter was as much of a surprise to me as it 
was to everybody else. Never before had Quay been 
known to give publicity in advance to his views upon a 
measure yet to be determined. It showed his loyalty, 
courage, vigor and capacity for expression. It presented 
my cause with an effectiveness which it would have been 
impossible for me to have given . It threw the line of assault 
into confusion. It pointed out to the lawyers what it is 
remarkable they had not seen for themselves, that since 
an appointment comes from one source of power, the 
governor, and an election from another source of power, 
the people, there was no real connection between them, 
and that I. could have avoided the whole ground of their 
censure by simply leaving the judicial office vacant until 
the election. The condemnation of the impropriety of 
Brown, which might with good grace have been given by 
Dickson, Simpson and Beeber, while they were reading 
lessons in dialectics, had been administered by a United 
States Senator who had placed him on the Bench, and 
Brown never uttered a word thereafter. 

The convention met on the 5th of April. None of the 
men around me, save Carson, had any intimation of what 
I was going to do. I doubt whether the political leaders, 
save Quay, were any better informed. On the 2d of April 
the Committee of Lawyers published another long pro- 
nunciamento. On the 5th, the headline of the Record said: 
"Pennypacker's Excuse to Run is Made to Order," and 
the headline of the Press said: "Pennypacker Will Accept 
Nomination." In the morning the eighty-six delegates 
from Philadelphia met and unanimously endorsed my nomi- 
nation. At 4 p. M. David H. Lane, with a committee, 
came to the department and officially tendered to me 
the nomination. The time to speak had come. My 
response had been roughly written on a loose sheet of 
office paper. Lane made a neat and sensible speech, and 
then I read : 

343 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

In view of the possibility of some such action as you have 
taken, I have given careful consideration to the subject in a con- 
scientious effort to reach a correct conclusion. I have examined 
the matter in all of its relations, so far as I have been able to 
understand them, and I have concluded not to be a candidate 
and not to permit my name to be presented to the convention. 
In so doing I want further to say to you that this expression of 
consistent confidence, coming from the people of the city which 
you represent, and wherein my judicial work was done, wuU ever 
be one of the grateful memories of my life. 

All had the feeling that they were participating in an 
event of solemnity. Lane, aided by David Martin and 
Henry F. Walton, tried to persuade me, but the die was 
cast. My last chance of completing the current of my 
life, as I had chosen it for myself, had departed forever. 
Never for an instant have I since regretted the decision. 
To have accepted the nomination would have been to 
have done not a wrong but a weak thing, and it remains 
a satisfaction to me to know that, when tested again, as 
I had been in youth when most of my friends went home 
and left me to go alone to Gettysburg, the inherited instincts 
which constitute character were not found wanting. 

Walton besought me to let him have the scrap of paper 
from which I had read. He framed it and hung it in his 
home. A good speaker, stout and agreeable, he had partici- 
pated in many campaigns; a good lawyer, he had a con- 
siderable practice; he had several times been speaker of 
the House, and now is prothonotary of the courts of common 
pleas in Philadelphia. When the bill for an appropriation 
to build a fire-proof building for the Historical Society of 
Pennsylvania was under consideration, he had come to 
me and said it would be passed or not as I wished, and it 
was passed. After my declination had been received, 
John P. Elkin was nominated without opposition. These 
events, which I saw from the inside, have been narrated 
in detail partly because they illustrate the character and 
methods of Quay, who Senator Thomas C. Piatt of New 
344 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

York, himself an expert, says was the ablest politician the 
country has ever produced. A review of these events 
shows with entire plainness the following facts: 

A vacancy in the Supreme Court in which, profes- 
sionally and otherwise, I took a great interest was filled, 
while I was governor, for twenty -one years by the selection 
of a man whom I had declined to appoint. The committee 
of the bar were so wearied with the chase after an ignis 
fatuus, and their feet were so clogged with the mire of the 
swamps, that they accepted without a murmur the selection 
of a man whom most of those they represented had 
denounced as a ring politician of such type that he was 
unfit even for executive oflSce. The press, which would 
have opposed anybody, good or bad, favored by Quay, 
had been kept for four months upon a trail that led nowhere. 
My efforts to be decent, the pathos of the committee of 
lawyers, and the malice of the newspapers, had each con- 
tributed its part toward the completion of the plans of 
this master in the manipulation of men. If this be not 
genius, where will we find it? It ought to be added that 
Elkin was elected by a large majority, as I would have 
been, and has made an upright and unusually capable 
judge, who has won the approval of the entire profession. 
The lawyers over the state who signed a protest numbered 
one hundred and six, a small percentage of the whole bar. 
The newspapers, after the close of this episode, were, I 
think, rather more cautious about telling their readers 
what I intended to do. In a vein of playfulness Quay 
sent me from Florida these excerpts : 

Et interrogatum est ab omnibus "ubi est ille J. Hay Brown?" 
Et respondum est ab omnibus "non est inventus." 

Et interrogatum est ab omnibus "ubi est ille high and reput- 
able writer?" et respondum est ab omnibus "non est inventus." 

Et interrogatum est ab omnibus "ubi est ille high and responsi- 
ble writer?" Et respondum est cum cachino "non est inventus." 

Delude iteratum est ab omnibus cum cachinatione undulante 
et trepidante "non sunt inventi." Murder as a Fine Art. 

345 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Rudolph Blankenburg in Philadelphia and Henry 
Watterson in the Louisville Courier -Journal, both made 
efforts to reply to Quay's letter. The platform adopted 
by the convention set forth : 

''We heartily endorse the wise, bold, fearless, honest, 
economical and efficient administration of Governor Samuel 
W. Pennypacker, " and the convention selected me as a 
delegate to the National RepublicanConvention to nominate 
candidates for the Presidency and Vice Presidency. 

A versifier wrote: 

Surprise and consternation reign, 
For after weeks of stress and strain 
And labor which was all in vain. 

The boys who split the welkin 
With ringing Pennypacker cries, 
Their programme must forthwith revise, 
And shifting round contrarywise, 

Must raise the roof for Elkin. 

It is a pleasure to turn from the literature of journalism 
to the literature of the schools of learning. 

The University of Pennsylvania on February 22d 
conferred upon me the degree of Doctor of Laws. In 
presenting me, J. Levering Jones said to the provost, Charles 
C. Harrison: 

We have escorted here this morning, with formal courtesy 
and demonstration and brought into the presence of this imposing 
assemblage, the Governor of this Commonwealth, because he has 
by merit attained high public station and won an honorable name 
in letters and in law. He is a successor of the sagacious and 
virtuous Penn ; the chief magistrate of a state imperial in domain, 
resources and population, possessing greater wealth than Eng- 
land in the days of Elizabeth, and a culture as wide and uni- 
versally diffused as the England of our own times. 

Patient and reflective in temperament, industrious in mental 
habit, with the inherent tastes of a scholar, at the bar he was not 
satisfied merely to advise a client or formulate arguments before 
the court; he remained the indefatigable student of history, ever 

346 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

examining the great events of the past and their significance that 
he might adequately comprehend the social forces that determine 
legislation and laws. Hence the bench was congenial to him and 
he adorned it with the soundness of his judgment, the ripeness of 
his learning, the simplicity of his manner and by the uprightness 
of his character. 

Literature is indebted to his contributions, for they are the 
product of persevering and profound research. He has illumi- 
nated the early history of the Quakers and the Germans, along the 
shores of the Delaware, and delved into the musty archives of 
four nations that he might with fidelity depict The Settlement of 
Germantown and eloquently describe the life and civic virtues of 
the learned Pastorius. 

Since 1886 he has been a trustee of the University, active 
in promoting its interests, pleading always in its behalf, giving 
without measure time and service. We give generous praise to 
those who thus labor in the cause of education, opening the eyes 
that they may see more and farther; instructing the ears that 
they may hear more perfectly; awakening all the senses that they 
may more swiftly appreciate; enriching the mind that it may 
more wisely and efficiently understard. 

Strong and steadfast in conviction; faithful in friendship; 
loyal in principle; passionately devoted to Pennsylvania and its 
institutions, he has ever performed with honor the responsible 
duties that have devolved upon him. For his eminent services 
as a citizen and his lofty qualities of heart and mind, we, the 
Trustees present Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker to the Provost 
that he may receive the degree of Doctor of Laws. 

The winter of 1903-04 was severe and the Susquehanna, 
the most impressive of the rivers of Pennsylvania, was 
frozen across, giving beautiful displays of ice effects which 
could be seen from the windows of the executive mansion. 
The thaw came in the early part of March, the waters rose 
to a great height, piling cakes of ice in huge masses. On 
Sunday, March 6th, in the afternoon, while the rain was 
still falling in torrents, I was called to the telephone 
and informed that near Goldsborough, a few miles below 
Harrisburg, fourteen people were on an island in the river, 
that the waters were rapidly rising and had reached the 

347 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

second stories of the houses in which they had taken shelter, 
that the ice was piled up between them and the shore, 
making them inaccessible, and that unless relieved they 
would soon be drowned. It was a situation in which I 
did not laiow what to do. I so told the man at the other 
end and asked him what he had to suggest. He said he 
thought I could perhaps get the life-saving people at the 
station at Atlantic City to come up. I could have done 
so, no doubt, but meanwhile the people on the island would 
have been drowned. I sent for Captain John C. Delaney 
and told him to go down there at once and see what could 
be done. He soon returned with the report that the situa- 
tion was hopeless. At the same time I sent for James M. 
Shumaker, who at once had a plan, which was to take the 
riggers who were at work on the Capitol, and used to moving 
around with little support, with their tackle and necessary 
apparatus, down there. Shumaker was the right man in 
the right place, and that the very thing to do. He was 
put in charge of the arrangements. Senator E. K. McConkey 
of York, a fine fellow who, within a few years died of heart 
disease, who had arrived on the scene, assisted. They 
fastened ropes to the shore, one man went out on the ice 
a short distance and there stood at the rope. Another 
went a little further and so on until they had a living chain 
reaching to the edge of the current. Then with a boat 
they took the people out of the upper windows of the 
house and brought them all, including a grandmother 
seventy-five years old, over the ice piles in safety to the 
shore. It was a thrilling and dramatic incident and here 
was a man equal to an emergency, who was willing to do 
his duty and, when occasion required it, more than his 
duty, deserving well of the state. Those rescued were the 
families of John and George Burger, who had been caught 
by the waters on Shelly 's Island. 

Since Roosevelt had postponed his participation in the 
ceremonies of University Day for a year, the authorities of 
348 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

that institution invited me to deliver the oration on the 
22d of February. It gave me the opportunity to present 
the thought which had never before been suggested, but 
which I then and have since emphasized, that the public 
career of George Washington was essentially a Pennsylvania 
career, beginning and ending in this state, though he was 
born and died in Virginia. At the same time that the 
University conferred upon me the degree of Doctor of 
Laws, it conferred degrees upon the Baron von Sternberg, 
Ambassador from Germany to the United States, a slightly 
built, sandy and affable German with whom, through a 
number of occasions of meeting, I established an acquaint- 
ance; Chief Justice Mitchell and James Whitcomb Riley, 
the Hoosier Poet, whom I then encountered for the only 
time, a small man with a bald head, a big mouth, a genial 
smile, and who wore glasses. 

A vicious system had grown up in the state of providing 
for the maintenance of the peace by the appointment of 
what were called ''Coal and Iron Police." It began with 
the railroads and mining corporations, but had gradually 
extended so as to include corporations in various sorts of 
business. These police were selected, paid and discharged 
by the corporations, but were commissioned by the state 
and exercised its authority to make arrests. This most 
delicate power of the state had to a great extent been 
transferred to the officials of one of the parties to the con- 
troversies which every once in a M'^hile arose. With entire 
propriety, the working men engaged in struggles with 
their employers, resented the intrusion of these police and 
their interference was more likely to cause than to prevent 
violence. During the last year of Stone's administration 
4,512 of these police had been appointed, and, while during 
my first year they had been lessened to 186, the situation 
was still bad enough. The commissions had been issued 
for indefinite periods of time and there were unknown 
numbers of men within the state who, after being dis- 

349 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

charged, still held these evidences of authority. In April 
of 1904, I took hold of the matter. I required, before 
appointment, affidavits to be filed, giving the records and 
characters of the men and the necessity for their appoint- 
ment, restricted the commissions to a term of three years, 
and determined at the next legislative session to endeavor 
to do away with the entire system. 

During my whole term as governor, all attempts to 
make use of the office and its incumbent for advertising 
purposes were, as I have written, resisted and thwarted 
and, therefore, all invitations to pitch the first ball at 
baseball games and to do like things were declined. On 
the 13th of April, however, I went to Shamokin Dam in 
Snyder County, along with Hunter and other officials of 
the Highway Department, and there, with a pick and a 
shovel, in the presence of a crowd, began the good roads 
movement and the improvement of the roads by the state. 
I made a little speech to the onlookers and then began to 
throw the dirt. 

A commission, of which Governor William A. Stone 
was the chairman, for the purpose of erecting a Capitol 
in the place of that which had been burned, had been 
organized August 20, 1901, but more than a year had been 
occupied in the selection of the plans and the preparatory 
arrangements, so that little of the work had been done 
when I became Governor and assumed the responsibility 
for the progress of the building. I laid the comer-stone 
May 5, 1904, which covered a copper box containing con- 
temporaneous records and suitable inscriptions, using a 
silver trowel presented to me for the purpose. A corner- 
stone had been placed by Governor Daniel H. Hastings 
in the structure begun in 1898, but since that was a cheap 
brick building, practically abandoned, being regarded as 
insufficient, it was thought best to begin anew. 

On the 24th of May I made an address in the morning 
at the dedication of the new court house in Norristown 
350 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

and, in the afternoon, introduced by Wayne MacVeagh, 
I took a pick and broke ground for the erection of the 
new building of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania 
at 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia. 

On the 28th of May, Senator Quay died. I have 
endeavored to make an analysis of his character and present 
his achievement in a paper, prepared at the request of the 
Legislature of Pennsylvania, and it appears in my Pennsyl- 
vania in American History. The feature of his career 
which impresses me most forcibly is its pathos. Here was 
a man with a lineage, identified with the state since its 
foundation, whose forefathers had borne the commissions of 
the province in the French and Indian and the Revolution- 
ary wars, with a capacity for statecraft, conceded to have 
been unsurpassed, with literary attainments and skill, 
with generous instincts and a kindly tolerance for even his 
enemies, without those elementary impulses which are 
gratified with the accumulation of money, who devoted 
his whole life to the advancement of the interests of the 
state and accomplished very much in her behalf, a soldier 
who fought for her with distinguished honor, and a states- 
man who won for her great rewards ; and yet ever followed 
by the persistent abuse of the faithless and incompetent, 
he failed to receive the appreciation which was his due. 
A brave knight, he won his many successes only by con- 
tinuous battle against heavy odds. It is easy to win the 
applause of the crowd — to give them uphft is a difficult 
process. Had we given him support, as Kentucky gave 
it to Henry Clay and Massachusetts gave it to Daniel 
Webster, in spite of their many delinquencies, it would 
have been well for the reputation and the welfare of the 
state. I had seen him a few months before his death. He 
sent me a telegram from Atlantic City asking me to come 
down there. I dined with him and he and I were pushed 
around over the boardwalk in a rolling chair. He talked to 
me about the family, his people, about his experiences in 

351 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

life and during the whole three hours not one word concern- 
ing the politics of the state. I understood that he had 
sent for me in order to say farewell to one for whom he felt 
a sympathy and to whom he had shown a friendship. If 
there was anything of a personal character which he would 
have liked to have accomplished he never mentioned the 
subject, and so displayed a delicacy of which few men 
would have been capable. 

On Decoration Day, the 30th, Roosevelt made an 
address at Gettysburg from a platform near the spot where 
Lincoln had spoken. It was the first time he had ever been 
upon that field. Mrs. Roosevelt and their little daughter, 
Ethel, came with him and it became my duty to look after 
and endeavor to entertain the young lady, a hearty and 
agreeable little girl, who afterward wrote to me a pretty 
note. It rained throughout the entire ceremonies, but the 
people stood under their umbrellas and listened. The 
necessity of introducing the President gave me the oppor- 
tunity to express my own thought concerning the signifi- 
cance of that decisive battle and I said : 

The Battle of Gettysburg, momentous in its exhibition of 
military force and skill, tremendous in its destruction of human 
life, had consequences which in their effect upon the race are 
limitless. As the seeds of the cockle are sown with the wheat, 
so in the constitution adopted by the fathers in 1787 lay the 
germs of an inevitable struggle. Two antagonistic forces grew 
in vigor and strength, side by side, in one household, and, like 
Ormuzd and Ahriman, they must strive for the mastery. Upon 
this field the strupgle came to a determination and the issue 
between them was here decided with cannon and musket. The 
rebellion was undertaken by the followers of the doctrines of 
Calhoun and Davis with the purpose to rend the nation asunder 
and break it into fragments. Alas for the futility of the expecta- 
tions of men! The Lord who holds the peoples in the hollow of 
his hand, and who, since the dawn of history, has taken them up 
by turns in the search for one fit for broad domination, did not 
forsake us. The extraordinary powers exercised for the main- 
tenance of the national life in that dire time of war became fixed 
352 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

as the principles of the national government. The flame of 
strife but tested the virtue of the metal. The blows intended to 
dissever only welded the sovereignties together more firmly for 
future wider effort. The nation, as it exists today, arose when 
Pickett failed to drive the Philadelphia Brigade from the stone 
wall on Cemetery Hill. A seer, sitting on that dread day upon 
the crests of Big Round Top, could have figured, in the clouds of 
smoke rolling over the Devil's Den and the Bloody Angle, the 
scenes soon to occur in Manila Bay, at Santiago and San Juan 
Hill, the beaming of a new light at Hawaii and in the far Philip- 
pines, the junction of the two mighty oceans and the near disap- 
pearance of English control of the commerce of the world. 

The presidential oflSce is so great a station among men that 
those who fill it are not to be regarded as personalities. Their 
individuality is lost in its immensity. They become the mani- 
festations of certain impulses and stages of development of the 
national life. Jackson represented its rough, uncouth and undis- 
ciplined strength. Lincoln looms up above all other Americans 
bearing the burden of woe and suffering which fate laid upon his 
broad shoulders in its time of stress and trial. Blessed be his 
memory forevermore! No people can look forward to the ful- 
filment of such a destiny as events seem to outline for us save 
one alert and eager with the enthusiasm and vigor of youth. No 
other President has so stood for that which, after all, typifies our 
life — the sweep of the winds over broad prairies, the snow-capped 
mountains and the rushing rivers, the Sequoia trees, the exuber- 
ance of youth conscious of red blood, energy and power, pointing 
our bow of promise, as does Theodore Roosevelt. He has hunted 
in our woods, he has enriched our literature, he has ridden in the 
face of the enemy, he has maintained our ideals. Upon this day, 
devoted to the memories of the heroic dead — in Pennsylvania a 
sad Decoration Day* — the achievements of the prolific past and 
the promise of the teeming future confront each other. Today 
for the first time Theodore Roosevelt treads the field made 
immortal by the sword of George Gordon Meade and hallowed by 
the prose dirge of Abraham Lincoln. 

Philander C. Knox, then in the Cabinet, wrote: ''I 
have heard the President and Mrs. Roosevelt both express 
their very high appreciation of the way in which 3'ou pre- 
sented him at Gettysburg." 

*Quay lay dead. 

23 353 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

John Hay wrote : "I was greatly struck with it when I 
saw it in the newspapers and have read it again with the 
greatest interest and renewed admiration." 

Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks wrote: "It was a 
perfect gem." 

General Daniel E. Sickles, w^ho was there, wrote: ''You 
said a great deal worth remembering, in a short space of 
time. . . . The charm is perfect." 

And Edward Everett Hale, who was also present, pub- 
lished in the Boston Christian Register a report in which 
he said : 

The occasion was attended by gentlemen and ladies of dis- 
tinction from every quarter. Governor Pennypacker, whom I 
heard called, by one who had a right to speak, the most sagacious 
and reliable governor of the state since Benjamin Franklin was 
its president, introduced the President in a speech apt indeed 
for its memories. 

The following day I attended the funeral of Senator 
Quay and heard the services in the Presbyterian Church 
at Beaver, where he had lived his home life and the people 
were most able to understand and appreciate his character. 
Clergymen of different denominations participated and 
the Rev. J. R. Ramsey delivered the funeral sermon. 

The death of Quay left Senator Boies Penrose as the 
titular head of the Republican party in the state. On 
the 3d of June, along with Dr. Henry D. Heller, the quaran- 
tine physician, Charles H. Heustis, health officer, Lieutenant 
Governor William M. Brown, Senator Penrose and many 
others, I went down the Delaware River upon the tugboat 
which had been given my name to inspect the quarantine 
station. On the way I took occasion to have a talk with 
Penrose and told him in effect that circumstances had 
imposed a certain responsibility upon him and me and 
that he could depend upon me to do all that properly could 
be done to maintain the control of the state by the Republi- 
354 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

can party, and that in my view it could be best accomplished 
by endeavoring to work out certain results. Penrose is a 
large man, tall and stout, dark in complexion, with a heavy 
growth of hair on his head, a graduate of Harvard, intelligent 
and able to make a clear and convincing speech, cynical 
in his philosophy, given to self-indulgence and mentally 
slothful. I never knew him to indicate that he was looking 
further than the results of the next election. I never knew 
him to urge support of a man or a measure upon the ground 
that the man was the most capable for the position or that 
the measure was likely to produce beneficial results, but 
his thought seemed ever to be to ascertain what would tide 
over an existing emergency in some political combination. 
Had I followed his advice I would, on one occasion, have 
appointed a judge who within two weeks thereafter was 
arrested upon a charge of embezzlement. 

Soon after Quay's death I said to him: 

"Senator, there will be a great contest in this state 
over the election of the next governor and you had better 
be making your arrangements now in preparation for it." 
His reply was: 

"Nonsense, there is not a sign of disturbance anywhere 
in the state. It would cost $250,000 and there is not a 
man in the state who would be willing to spend the money. 
If Durham and I cannot manage the next convention and 
election we ought to go and hide our heads." 

He turned to Israel W. Durham, who was present, 
and Durham agreed with him. I insisted upon my view. 

"Why, do you know anything?" he inquired. 

"No, I do not know a thing, but let me tell you this — 
there are a lot of uneasy people all over the state whom 
Quay had suppressed. He had beaten them so often that 
they feared to enter a contest with him. You are untried. 
They will be up in arms and you will have to fight for your 
seat before you can hold it and their opportunity will come 
over the governorship." 

355 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

This process of reasoning made no impression on him 
and it marks the difference between him and Quay, who 
would have foreseen the situation which arose. 

There was a vacancy in the United States Senate to be 
filled. If Quay ever had the thought that his son Richard 
might succeed him there, as J. Donald Cameron had followed 
his father, he never even gave me a hint of his wish . Richard 
R. Quay, a bright, dapper little fellow, who had shown 
an aptitude for making money, had done nothing in pubhc 
life which would justify such a selection. His appointment 
could only have been made by subordinating duty to 
friendship. The newspapers, as is their wont, proceeded 
at once to determine the person who should be selected 
and the manner in which it should be done. In their view, 
if the governor did not call the legislature together in 
special session for the purpose he would be a violator of the 
constitution, and they cited an argument of my attorney 
general in support of the proposition. Among their selec- 
tions were William Flinn, Joseph C. Sibley, John Dalzell, 
Francis Robbins, Henry C. Frick and John P. Elkin. In 
an interview in the executive mansion at Harrisburg, at 
which were present Penrose, Robert McAfee and other 
party leaders, the Senator offered to me tentatively a list 
of about six names. We talked over the matter at some 
length. George T. Oliver of Pittsburgh was the only one 
who was satisfactory in my view, and most of the men 
suggested I would not have appointed under any circum- 
stances. Finally I said to Penrose : 

''The proper man to send to the Senate is Philander 
C. Knox." 

His name was not on the list. The interview then ended. 
A day or two later, I was invited to dine with The Farmers' 
Club at the farm of A. J. Cassatt in the Chester Valley. 
There were present, among others, George F. Baer, Wayne 
MacVeagh and Senator Penrose. When the dinner was 
over Penrose asked me to walk out on the lawn and there 
356 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

he told me that "they" had talked it over and had con- 
cluded to ask me to appoint Knox. 

"I will do it at once," I replied; "that suits me exactly." 
I had determined, if Knox were willing to accept, with the 
risk of the election by the legislature, to make the appoint- 
ment without an understanding." 

We were in a cordial good humor and the Senator further 
said to me: "Durham and I have talked over the matter 
and have concluded that when the next vacancy occurs 
in the Supreme Court of the United States or in the Supreme 
Court of the state, to insist upon your having the place." 

This fact further illustrates the difference in the 
methods of Quay and Penrose. Quay never would 
have made such a promise unnecessarily and unre- 
quested, and if he had made it, would have seen that it 
was fulfilled. 

I made the appointment at once. 

Knox, through his intelligence, experience and knowl- 
edge of the law, soon took a commanding position in 
the Senate and the state never was more worthily repre- 
sented there. 

He made a mistake in accepting the position of Secretary 
of State under President Taft, a place in which the incum- 
bent, if he fails, is sure to get the blame, and if he succeeds 
is sure to have some one else receive the credit. I accom- 
panied the appointment with an opinion giving my view 
of the effect of the provisions of the Constitutions of the 
United States and of the state differing from that which 
had been expressed by Mr. Carson and been supported 
by the newspapers, which latter had no care to have the 
state well represented, and only sought to embarrass Penrose 
and the Republican party. Unable to meet the arguments 
of my paper, which no lawyer undertook to do, they sought 
to take it out of me by calling me a "violator of the con- 
stitution," an "anarchist," a "nullifier," and by saying 
I had committed a "palpable malfeasance" and a "viola- 

357 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

tion of law." In fact, I was as much abused by these 
interested commentators for selecting the most capable 
man in the state to represent it in the Senate as I was 
later for seeing to it that Pennsylvania had the most beautiful 
and most inexpensive state capitol in the country. 

On the 11th of June I went to Pittsburgh to deliver an 
address and accept for the state the monument to Colonel 
Alexander Le Roy Hawkins and the dead of the Tenth 
Pennsylvania Regiment, which was the only regiment 
from the thirteen original states to participate in the war 
with Aguinaldo in the Philippines. 

About this time I made an order that no more justices 
of the peace would be appointed without a statement in 
detail of the age, occupation and qualifications of the 
applicant, accompanied by certificates from residents of 
the neighborhood of his integrity and ability to perform 
the duties of the office. 

It was a busy time and events crowded upon each other 
rapidly. On the 20th of June I was in Chicago as a delegate 
to the National Republican Convention. My rooms were 
in the Auditorium Hotel, where an agreeable impression 
was made by the Pompeiian room fitted up entirely with 
eastern ornamentation and a disagreeable impression was 
made by seeing the young men and young women, evidently 
of the cultivated classes, coming in to drink highballs and 
cocktails together as though it were quite the thing. The 
newspapers, in their efforts to suppress me because of the 
legislation making them responsible for negligence, had 
succeeded in producing the opposite result, and had given 
me an undeserved prominence. Governors Odell of New 
York, Herrick of Ohio, and Murphy of New Jersey came 
to my rooms, and it was reported: ''The Governor was 
the striking figure in the hotel lobby and was the object 
of much attention." The Pennsylvania delegation held 
a caucus and determined to vote as a unit. At this caucus 
I offered the following resolution : 
358 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

Resolved, That the Republicans of Pennsylvania, in unison 
with the people, rejoice in the achievements and deplore the 
death of Matthew Stanley Quay. A soldier, he won the medal 
of honor for distinguished services on the field of battle; a scholar, 
he could impress a thought and turn a phrase with deft skill; a 
political leader of capacity unexcelled, he entered the stronghold 
of the foe and achieved a presidential victory under the most 
adverse conditions; a Senator, his wise counsel and keen intelli- 
gence were ever sought and always potent; a statesman, he pre- 
vented the passage of the force bill and in time of stress pre- 
served the principle of protection to American industries to the 
lasting benefit of the country; an exemplar of bold and steadfast 
integrity, his last contest was a successful effort to compel the 
national government to keep faith with the down-trodden and the 
helpless. May he find in the grave that longed-for peace which 
ingratitude denied to him while he was alive! 

Somebody called for a standing vote and every delegate 
arose to his feet, although many of them were of independent 
proclivities, and voted in favor of the resolution. To 
Pennsylvania was accorded the opportunity to make 
one of the nominating speeches. It is the broadest field 
in America upon which a man may address his fellow men, 
and in these conventions is determined who shall guide 
the destinies of the nation for a period of four years. Pen- 
rose came to me and generously asked me to make the 
speech. I told him he was called upon, as the leader of 
the party in the state, to do it himself, but he insisted, 
and the truth is, I was not disinclined to make the ejffort. 
The convention was held in the wigwam with an audience 
of 30,000 people sitting, as in an amphitheater, with tiers 
rising one above another until they reached the rear and 
the top. A board and carpeted passage-way ran out from 
the platform toward the center so as to enable the speaker 
to approach as near as possible his hearers. " Uncle Joe" 
Cannon presided, and in his Western breezy way he pre- 
sented those who were to speak. He adopted all kinds of 
antics to secure attention and maintain silence. On one 
occasion he lay flat and pounded on the boards of the 

359 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

floor with his heavy gavel. If the speaker failed to make 
himself heard distinctly, a buzz started in the audience, 
and thereafter he was utterly lost, a mere figure with twist- 
ing features and moving arms. There were very few who 
could stand the test. A man from California whose name 
I do not know, with a voice like the roaring of a bull, made 
the crowd laugh and listen. Elihu Root nominated Roose- 
velt. It was a good speech, but he could not be heard 
even by our delegation, whose location was very near to 
the stand, and, therefore, at the time was ineffective. I 
was called on the second day from my place on the plat- 
form where I sat apart from the delegation as one of the 
vice presidents of the convention. 

It is to be hoped that my readers, if I ever have any, 
will look with lenity upon the introduction into these 
memoirs of some of my short speeches. If their eyes be 
wide open they will see that I am endeavoring to impress 
them, as I ever did my listeners, with the facts that show 
the great importance in American life of our own state. 
It is only the simple truth that I have been the first who, 
upon every possible occasion, in the face of those who 
have been taught and would rather think otherwise, has 
boldly asserted these facts and rigidly insisted upon their 
acceptance. All of my writing predecessors have been 
more or less explanatory and exculpatory and to that 
extent weak. It is a satisfaction to know that a result 
has been accomplished. William U, Hensel, Martin G. 
Brumbaugh and others have since adopted the same tone 
and it is to be hoped the time is near when our people will 
be inspired with a proper appreciation of and pride in their 
own wonderful influence upon broad affairs. On this 
occasion and to this vast audience I said : 

The Republican party held its first convention in that city 
of Western Pennsylvania which, in energy, enterprise and wealth, 
rivals the great mart upon the shores of the inland lakes, wherein, 
after the lapse of nearly half a century, we meet to-day. Penn- 

360 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

sylvania may well claim to be the leader among Republican 
states. The principles which are embodied in the platform of the 
party as we have adopted it are the result of the teachings of her 
scholars and statesmen. Her majorities for the nominees of that 
party have been greater and more certain than those of any other 
state. She alone, of all the states, since the election of Abraham 
Lincoln in 1860, has never given an electoral vote against a candi- 
date of the Republican party for the presidency. She is unselfish 
in her devotion. During the period of the half century that has 
gone, no son of hers has been either president or vice president. 
She has been satisfied, like the Earl of Warwick, to be the maker 
of kings. She has been content that regard should be given to 
the success of the party and the welfare of the country, rather 
than to the personal interests of her citizens. 

The waters of the Ohio, rising amid the mountains of Penn- 
sylvania, roll westward, bearing fertility to the prairie lands of 
Indiana. The thought of Pennsylvania Republicans, with kin- 
dred movement, turns toward the state which has produced Oliver 
P. Morton, Benjamin Harrison and the brave Hoosiers who 
fought alongside of Reynolds on the Oak Ridge at Gettysburg. 
She well remembers that when her own Senator, he who did so 
much for the Republican party, and whose wise counsels, alas! 
are missing today, bore a commission to Washington, he had no 
more sincere supporter than the able and distinguished states- 
man who then, as he does now, represented Indiana in the United 
States Senate. Pennsylvania, with the approval of her judgment 
and with glad anticipation of victory in her heart, following a 
leader who, like the Chevalier of France, is without fear and with- 
out reproach, seconds the nomination for the vice presidency of 
Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana. 

My voice is peculiar, but there are tones in it which 
are penetrating and reach far. Members of our delegation 
told me that they could hear easily, and certain it is that 
there was no whispering in the audience and that they 
gave attention to the address. At its close there came 
what was called an ovation of applause and Fairbanks 
came to my rooms to offer his thanks. 

Chauncey M. Depew also made a speech in behalf of 
the nomination of the vice president. 

About this time the Philobiblon Club, at my suggestion, 

361 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

brought out the edition de luxe and facsimile reproduction 
of The Chronicles of Nathan Ben Saddi, the satire upon 
Franklin, Norris, Isaac Wayne and others about the time 
of the French and Indian War. I may be forgiven for 
repeating that it is probably the brightest bit of literature 
the colonies produced, and that for it I wrote the preface, 
giving such facts concerning its origin as could be ascer- 
tained. On the 27th of June I made an address at the 
laying of the comer-stone of the Homeopathic Insane 
Asylum at Rittersville, near Allentown, in which Dr. Hey- 
singer was very much interested. It always seemed to me 
absurd to talk about a homeopathic insanity and there 
was later much unfavorable comment upon the cost of the 
building, and the fact that it had not been completed even 
at the expiration of the term of my successor. 

At the close of July I went to the camp of the National 
Guard at Gettysburg and was again much chattered about 
by the quidnuncs because I adhered to my rule of review 
from a barouche, and there again I inspected every member 
of every regiment and the culinary and other departments. 
The adjutant general, Stewart, one of the most capable 
and energetic of men, had it in mind to arrange for a perma- 
nent annual encampment there, but I felt called upon to 
interfere with him and put an end to the plan. Colonel 
John P. Nicholson, chairman of the Battlefield Commission, 
was much opposed to it, and my opinion was that we ought 
not to force any later uses or associations upon the 
field where the most fateful of American battles was 
fought. 

On the 1st of August Governor Robert E. Pattison 
died. I knew him well; a tall man, with dark eyes, he had 
the wonderful fortune to be twice elected as a Democrat 
to the position of governor of this Republican state. Men- 
tally he was painstaking, but not vigorous, and he was 
not very successful in the office or financially afterward. 
He was of the type of men who always meet with mild 
362 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

good will and approval. Stone and I were both pall-bearers 
and attended the funeral. I issued a public proclamation. 

During this summer the International Exposition at 
St. Louis, to commemorate the Louisiana Purchase, was 
opened. I determined that Pennsylvania should take a 
prominent part and that the opportunity should be seized 
to bring before the people of the state and the nation the 
importance of what she did at the time of the purchase 
in contrast with other parts of the country. Her vote 
in Congress was unanimous for the purchase, but the fact 
had never been pointed out except by Henry Adams, who 
describes her as the potent factor in the government at 
this period. Without this purchase we never could have 
been much of a nation. 

The legislature appropriated the sum of $300,000 for 
the state's participation. I appointed a commission of 
representative men to take charge of the matter con- 
sisting, together with those selected by the legislature, as 
follows : 

Samuel W. Pennypacker, president; Henry F. Walton, 
chairman of executive committee; James H. Lambert, execu- 
tive oflScer; Frank G. Harris, state treasurer; Bromley Whar- 
ton, secretary; George J. Brennan, secretary; William M. 
Brown, New Castle; E. B. Hardenbergh, Honesdale; Isaac B. 
Brown, Harrisburg; John M. Scott, Philadelphia; John C. 
Grady, Philadelphia; William C. Sproul, Chester; William P. 
Snyder, Spring City; J. Henry Cochran, Williamsport; Cyrus E. 
Woods, Greensburg; Theodore B. Stulb, Philadelphia; John 
Hamilton, Philadelphia; William B. Kirker, Bellevue; William 
Wayne, Paoh; John A. F. Hay, Clarion; Fred T. Ikeler, Blooms- 
burg; Wm. H. Ulrich, Hummelstown; A. F. Cooper, Homer 
City; Frank B. McClain, Lancaster; George D. Hartman, 
Wilkes-Barre; Wm. S. Harvey, Philadelphia; Morris L. Clothier, 
Philadelphia; Joseph M. Gazzam, Philadelphia; George H. 
Earle, Jr., Philadelphia; Charles B. Penrose, Philadelphia; 
George T. Oliver, Pittsburgh; H. H. Gilkyson, Phcenixville; 
Hiram Young, York; James Pollock, Philadelphia; James 
McBrier, Erie. 

363 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

I selected as Pennsylvania Day the 20th of August, 
the one hundred and tenth anniversary of Wayne's victory 
at the Fallen Timbers, in order to enforce attention to the 
fact that it was Wayne who won for us the whole Middle 
West. There was much opposition to this date among the 
commission for the reason that it was in the very midst 
of the hottest part of the season and, therefore, likely to 
interfere with the pleasures of the occasion, but I was 
inexorable upon this point. An artistic building was 
erected at a cost of $96,145.64, and it was visited by more 
people than all of the other state buildings together, due 
in large part to the presence of the Liberty Bell. The 
exhibits were most creditable and received many medals 
from the National Commission. 

We left Philadelphia on the 18th with a large party 
which included my staff, Mrs. Pennypacker, Mrs. Carson 
and many of the commissioners and their wives, and the 
next day arrived in St. Louis, where, for the first time, I 
saw the Mississippi River, and we put up at the Jefferson 
Hotel. On the m4nu for dinner there appeared ''Boiled 
Owl." I was sorely tempted to try what the thing was 
like, but the price was four dollars and I forebore. We 
concluded that night to go out in automobiles and take a 
preliminary look at the fair. We had gone about four 
squares when one of the most violent of thunder-storms 
let loose upon us, the bolts of lightning striking and sphn- 
tering the poles beside us on the street, and we hurried 
back to the hotel, wet to the skin. In the morning, escorted 
by the famous City Troop, with John C. Groome at its head, 
I was driven out to the Pennsylvania Building, which we 
examined. The day proved to be fully as hot as had been 
anticipated and all were uncomfortable, but endured their 
martyrdom for the good of the state. There I delivered an 
address setting forth in detail Pennsylvania's part in the crea- 
tion of the West and the securing of the lands of the Missis- 
sippi Valley. It has often been reprinted; it appears in 
364 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

my Pennsylvania in American History and it produced the 
effect which had been intended. In the evening Mrs. 
Pennypacker and I held a reception attended by Governor 
David R. Francis, the president of the Exposition. In 
connection with the exercises I had reproduced A. J. H. 
Duganne's poem Hurrah for Pennsylvania, up to that time 
almost unknown, and it was rendered with great effect by 
a lady elocutionist. After examining the Exposition, 
we left St. Louis on the night of the 23d. When the State 
Commission closed its labors it returned $30,000 to the 
treasury, an event almost without precedent. 

This successful effort to enhance the reputation of the 
state was a gratification to all of its decent citizens. There 
was, however, a fly in the ointment. The North American 
was lying in wait for a chance. When my proclamation 
was issued, calling upon all of our citizens and their descen- 
dants who could, to be present, the newspaper reporter, 
either through design or accident copied the reference to 
the anniversary of the Battle of Fallen Timbers as the one 
hundredth instead of the one hundred and tenth. The 
editorials followed saying that I made the battle occur 
after the death of Wayne. An examination of the original 
proclamation in the office of the Secretary of the Common- 
wealth disclosed, however, that it was the newspaper 
reporter who made the mistake and this plan of attack 
fell flat. Those in charge of the agricultural display had, 
because of his supposed knowledge of the subject, employed 
a Democratic professor at the State College and he bought 
a quantity of seeds, for which he paid $22.60, and placed 
them on exhibition. The man and the seeds had both 
been removed in May. The North America?! got hold of 
the story and cunningly exploited it on the 19th of August, 
just in time to reach the Exposition on Pennsylvania Day, 
and as far as possible soil the demonstration. To make a 
sensation, it gave to the subject nine columns and seventeen 
pictures, with caricature and other nonsense. It talked of 

365 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

"unparalleled fraud" and "graft," though this suggestion 
in connection with a sum of $22.60 was supremely silly. 
It concocted an interview with a member of the Com- 
mission, which he denied, in which he was made to say 
that not a leaf of Pennsylvania tobacco was in the exhibit, 
although our display of tobacco received the highest award 
at the Fair. Indignant at the baseness of the scheme 
and the way in which it was carried out, I did what I could 
at the moment and telegraphed to the Ledger branding the 
publication as a malicious falsehood, intended to harm the 
state. There is an honor among the members of this 
fraternity, as in another, which bands them together, and 
the Ledger suppressed the dispatch and endeavored to 
excuse the North American. 

On the 17th of September thirteen monuments to the 
soldiers of Pennsylvania regiments who fought in the 
Battle of Antietam were dedicated and handed over to the 
custody of the United States Government. I was present 
with my staff and made an address. 

During this month there occurred two events of a per- 
sonal nature which made an impression on me. A boy in 
a junk store in a Maryland town came across, amid the old 
iron, a stove plate with the name Pennybacker on it and 
he wrote to me about it. I bought it — a rather elaborate 
piece, with the inscription "D. Pennybacker. His Redwell 
Furnace, Sept. 24th, 1787." He was an iron master and 
the grandfather of the late Judge Isaac S. Pennybacker, 
United States Senator from Virginia, of whom President 
Polk, in his journal, speaks in terms of the warmest friend- 
ship. A day or two later I received a letter from Thomas 
Gatewood, a messenger in the public buildings in Pittsburgh, 
who had been a slave in the family of Senator Pennybacker, 
and I had some correspondence with him. 

On the 3d of October I presided at a meeting in the 
Academy of Music in Philadelphia, tendered by the United 
Irish League to John E. Redmond, the Irish Parliamentary 
366 



GOVERNOR, 1904 

leader, accompanied by two members of Parliament — 
Captain A. J. C. Donehan of Cork, and Patrick O'Brien 
of Kilkenny. Archbishop Ryan, an exceedingly able, bland 
and persuasive man, participated. 

On the 6th of October I was at York to attend the 
fair, the guest of Senator E. K. McConkey. At the horse 
race the driver of the leading horse, as he approached the 
goal, gently dropped the lines. His arms fell to his side 
and he rolled out upon the track dead. 

On the 18th of November Mrs. Pennypacker and I, 
upon the invitation of Mr. George W. Atherton, the president 
of the State College, attended the dedication of the Carnegie 
Library connected with that institution. Mr. and Mrs. 
Carnegie and Mr. and Mrs. Charles M. Schwab were there 
and since we spent a day or two with them in the same house 
we reached a stage of acquaintance. We found Schwab 
healthy, hearty and earnest, and Carnegie shrewd and 
agreeable. The latter gave much attention to Mrs. Penny- 
packer and told her many incidents of his early Hfe, and 
she has never been willing to listen to critical comments 
concerning him since. The coat of my evening suit of 
clothes was missing and I was compelled to appear at the 
table in street costume. Mrs. Pennypacker made her own 
explanations to account for my costume and Mr. Carnegie 
accepted and covered them up with both graciousness 
and adroitness. Carnegie, Schwab and I made addresses 
and Mrs. Carnegie expressed pleasure at seeing and hearing 
such an exhibition of state pride-^a feeling, she said, utterly 
non-existent in New York. 

On Sunday, December 4th, I had a personal adventure. 
William D. Hunsicker, the farmer at Pennypacker 's Mills, 
drove me in a buggy, with a rather wild horse, ''John," 
to Phoenixville. A mile from that town the elevated 
divide between the Perkiomen Creek and the Schuylkill 
River falls abruptly toward the river. There is a very 
long, steep and dangerous hill, the road in the valley below 

367 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

crossing a ravine and small stream by means of a narrow 
uncovered and unprotected bridge. Deep gulleys parallel 
the road on each side. As a general thing travelers make 
a detour of about a mile to avoid this sudden descent. 
For some reason Hunsicker concluded to drive down the 
hill. At the very top the breech-band broke, letting the 
harness fall upon the heels of the horse. He gave a kick, 
knocking the shafts to pieces, and started on a wild run. 
"We are in for it, Hunsicker. Keep in the middle of the 
road if you can," were the only words uttered. The wagon 
swayed to and fro toward the gulleys. Hunsicker's hat 
flew in one direction and mine in another. My umbrella 
was tossed into a gutter. When we reached the little 
bridge, where Hunsicker succeeded in bringing the horse 
to a stop, "John" was badly injured and the wagon a 
wreck, but neither of us had a scratch. It was an experi- 
ence to be remembered but not to be repeated. 



368 



CHAPTER Xn 

GOVEENOR, 1905 

THE legislature met again in session on the 3d of 
January, 1905. My message to it at this time I 
insert in an appendix entire for the reason that after 
two years of experience it represents my ripe thought 
as to the needs and interests of the commonwealth and the 
judgment of my public work must largely depend upon its 
recommendations. Many of them, the constabulary. Greater 
Pittsburgh, the apportionment notwithstanding the imprac- 
ticable provisions of the constitution, the tax upon coal, 
and others, have been accomplished. Some, like the exer- 
cise of eminent domain only upon the actual ascertainment 
of the public need, the application of the law of public 
nuisance to the habitual publication of falsehood, the 
extension of a park from the front of the Capitol to the 
Susquehanna River, await the further enlightenment of the 
people of the state. 

There was no consultation with any of the politicians 
in the preparation of this message, and it was seen by 
nobody prior to its presentation to the assembly. As was 
to be anticipated, the suggestion of further action in restraint 
of ''yellow journalism" was like stirring up a cage of wild 
animals. The newspapers met the suggestion, as usual, 
not with argument or reasoning, but by objurgation and a 
strained effort to make still uglier pictures. I did not 
attempt to influence the members of the legislature in any 
way and contented myself with having pointed out a 
method by which this great evil could be controlled should 
they choose to adopt it. Senator James P. McNichol came 
to me and said he proposed to vote for the measure if it 
24 369 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

did not receive another vote in the senate or house. Pen- 
rose said I ought to have presented the measure two years 
before, when it could have been passed. I think a large 
majority of the members of the legislature and of the people 
would have been pleased to have seen it a part of our 
statutory law, but the legislators and the party leaders 
were both timid. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was 
weak. It is the true solution of the difficulty, nevertheless. 
Intentional falsehood is not information and cannot hide 
itself behind the liberty of the press. To indulge in malice is 
not to publish a newspaper. Obscene literatm-e may be 
destroyed as a nuisance, and on the same principle, the 
Government of the United States throws out of the mails 
everything of this character. 

Penrose had heard that I proposed to urge a reapportion- 
ment of the state into senatorial and legislative districts. 
He said to me : 

'Tf you wish to recommend reapportionment in a per- 
functory way, you may do it, of course, but it will have no 
effect. The thing cannot be done. It has been tried too 
often." 

I replied: 

''Senator, I intend to recommend it, and not in a per- 
functory way, but with the intention to have it done, if 
possible." 

Among the milder comments was this brochure, which 
appeared in the New York Globe, under the name of Wallace 
Irwin : 

Pennypacker of Penn 

One moment, please, while a line I scan 
To a genial, popular, elderly man, 
Who's always able and willing to bless 
The noble gentlemen of the press. 
For the friends are many 
Of Governor Penny — 
Pennypacker of Penn. 

370 



GOVERNOR, 1905 



When an artist calls with a pad to trace 
The lineaments of that thoughtful face, 
The dear old governor utters a shout 
And orders the state militia out. 
For the whims are many 
Of Governor Penny — 
Pennypacker of Penn, 

When a cub reporter suggests a "steal" 

In a Pennsylvania grab-bag deal, 

The governor sees that the wight is took 

And drawn and quartered and hung on a hook, 

To please the many 

Admirers of Penny — 

Pennypacker of Penn. 

If a newspaper hints that Governor P. 
Is only human like you and nie, 
He has the editor shot on sight 
And blows up his office with dynamite. 
Which is good as any 
Explosive to Penny — 
Pennypacker of Penn. 

For the kind old man is the flower of flowers 

Of this democratical land of ours. 

And that is the reason the papers pay 

Respects to him in the warmest way, 

As the friend of many, 

Governor Penny — 

Pennypacker of Penn. 

On January 14th I presided over a dinner given at the 
Bellevue-Stratford in Philadelphia to General Henry H. 
Bingham, the member in longest service in the House of 
Representatives at Washington. Bingham is dapper, 
always well clothed, pleasant in speech, brisk and breezy. 
He was on the staff of Hancock at Gettysburg and was 
three times wounded. William M. Bunn, of the Clover 
Club, Justice John P. Elkin, Hampton L. Carson, Senator 

371 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Penrose, Thomas J. Stewart and Clayton McMichael all 
made speeches, and it was an affair remembered with 
pleasure. 

On the 17th Knox was elected a member of the United 
States Senate by the legislature by a vote of 223 to 23, con- 
firming my selection by the largest majority ever given for 
that office in the state. He is a small man with a clean face 
who knows exactly what he wants to do under all circum- 
stances and does it, unemotional, wasting no time seeking 
for popularity and perhaps a little too self-contained. The 
North American and the Philadelphia Record printed a yarn 
of the ordinary character that $500,000 were paid in order 
that he might be made the senator. When I first suggested 
him I had had no communication with him whatever, and 
he did not even know that I had him in mind. While on 
this subject it is just as well to give the statement of the 
secretary of the commonwealth, Robert McAfee. In an 
interview in the Pittsburgh Leader, January 22, 1905, he 
said: 

"I was summoned to the executive mansion about nine 
o'clock in the evening of June 8th, by the governor. On 
arriving there I found Senator Penrose and Insurance 
Commissioner Durham closeted with him. I first advised 
the governor that I had personal confirmation of the fact 
that Mr. George T. Oliver had declined the offer of an 
appointment to the Senate. A further discussion on the 
matter of candidates was taken up, and the governor 
promptly said that after looking over the state he was 
of the opinion that Attorney General Philander C. Knox, of 
President Roosevelt's Cabinet, was the proper man for the 
place." 

About this time my attention was called to the case of 
Katie Edwards, convicted of murder, committed under 
unusual circumstances. She and her husband, with a 
family of children, lived in Berks County. They were coarse, 
vulgar and ignorant, and the surroundings were all in 
372 



GOVERNOR, 1905 

accord. The husband had as one of his boon companions 
a black negro whom he invited to his home, and there they 
all caroused together. Presently, the woman was about to 
have another child, and she knew that when it should be 
born its color and features would disclose that the negro 
was the father. She was like a wild beast, caught in a trap 
from which there appeared to be no possible escape. One 
night the husband was knocked on the head and his dead 
body thrown into a vat or cistern. She and the negro were 
both arrested and later were convicted of murder in the first 
degree. Her child was born in prison. The case of the 
negro was taken to the Supreme Court. At the instance of 
Chief Justice Mitchell, with a view to providing for certain 
features of this case, an act of assembly was passed allowing 
the Supreme Court in its discretion to award a new trial, 
because of evidence discovered since the judgment of the 
Oyer and Terminer Court. The Supreme Court then 
awarded a new trial to the negro, and upon that trial he was 
acquitted. The situation was then that the negro was 
free and the woman in prison under sentence of death. 
Attention was called to the case all over the United States. 
Women were aroused and my mail was burdened with 
letters. Little children wrote to me beseeching my inter- 
vention. A petition in her behalf came to me from Ohio 
with many thousands of signatures. The Board of Pardons 
refused a pardon. A careful examination of the evidence 
led me to the opinion that both she and the negro had 
participated in the murder. If that opinion was well 
founded it was a case where the processes of justice went 
astray, and it would be a travesty to have the white woman 
hanged and the negro man escape unpunished. I refused 
to issue a death warrant and the governors who succeeded 
me followed the example set for them. Every once in a 
while the story of Katie Edwards and her fate crops out in 
the prints. 

The Philadelphia Record asked me for an expression of 

373 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

opinion upon the question as to what is Philadelphia's 
"greatest need, " to which I replied: 

''In my judgment Philadelphia, better than any other 
municipality upon the continent, represents the honest, 
conservative and healthful instincts of the American people, 
and is less swayed by fleeting, emotional impulses than any 
other city. In spirit she is patriotic and in achievement she 
excels. What she most needs is a newspaper, possessing her 
characteristics, imbued with her sentiments, and which has 
the capacity and the inclination to make her accomphsh- 
ments known to the world and to defend her against the 
written and spoken assaults of rivals elsewhere and of the 
unfaithful who have come among her people in an effort to 
better their fortunes." 

John P. Dwyer, the managing editor of the Record, a 
bright and capable fellow, with whom I have always been on 
good terms, then wrote, making this rather astonishing 
proposition on behalf of that journal: 

"It will turn over to you on any day you may select 
within the next three months, its entire plant, one of the 
most modern and complete in the world and offering every 
advantage for the printing and circulation of a newspaper, 
with the understanding that you shall have absolute charge 
of the men and materials at hand, or any other equipment 
that you may require, to prepare, print and circulate a 
newspaper of the character you have in mind. The propo- 
sition is made in the utmost good faith and with the earnest 
hope that you will see your way clear to its acceptance." 

Bromley Wharton, my secretary, wrote in response : 

"The governor directs me to say that while he very 
much appreciates the generosity of yoiu- proposition and 
the exceedingly courteous and complimentary terms in 
which it is couched, the time is too inadequate and the task 
is too overwhelming to permit him to accept." 

Dwyer returned to the charge, saying, in a long letter, 
among other things : 
374 



GOVERNOR, 1905 

"You can have your own time and dictate your own 
terms on this point. Whatever time you think you need 
to do yourself and your ideas justice, will be cheerfully 
granted and that the Record indulges in the hope that it 
may induce you to reconsider your determination." 

Wharton again wrote, January 31st: 

"The governor instructs me to acknowledge the receipt 
of your letter of the 12th inst. and to suggest to you the 
propriety of renewing your proposition after the expiration 
of his term." 

In its issue of February 3d, the Record printed the 
entire correspondence. 

On the 3d of March Andrew Carnegie gave out an inter- 
view in Pittsburgh, in which he said : 

"How are the Pennsylvania newspaper men and 
Governor Pennypacker getting along these days?" 

When told the relations were peaceful, he replied : 

"I am glad of it. He is a great governor. I had the 
pleasure of meeting him at State College last summer and 
was much impressed. He is so democratic. He is an 
honest man and has made a wonderful record as an execu- 
tive. When next you see him, I wish you would tell the 
governor that I favor his re-election." 

Mr. Carnegie was reminded that the Pennsylvania 
Constitution prevented Governor Pennypacker from 
succeeding himself without allowing a term to intervene. 

"That's too bad," replied Mr. Carnegie. "This is one 
case where I agree with Tim Campbell in remarking, ' What 
is the constitution among friends?' If he cannot succeed 
himself, then tell Governor Pennypacker I am for him for 
any higher office that he wants." 

In the morning of that day Mrs. Pennj^packer and I, 
accompanied by the staff, went down to Washington to take 
part in the inauguration of President Roosevelt. We had 
rooms at the Raleigh Hotel. The city was overcrowded 
and the railroads were overburdened. Mrs. Joseph C. 

375 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Audenried, the widow of Colonel Audenried, who was on 
the staff of General William T. Sherman during the war, a 
daughter of Coflnin Colket of Philadelphia, a second cousin of 
mine, and a leader in the fashionable life of the city and 
country, gave a dinner to Mrs. Pennypacker and myself. 
A swarthy, dark-eyed woman, she was good-looking and 
entirely gracious. Our clothes had not arrived, due to the 
delay on the trains, and we were compelled to appear as we 
were dressed for the cars, and she treated the fact with due 
lenity. At the dinner were the justices of the Supreme 
Court of the United States and their wives, and Mr. and 
Mrs. Wayne MacVeagh. Mrs. Audenried's daughter married 
a French count, the Count Divonne, and lives on the 
shores of Lake Geneva and has been a figure in the social life 
of Paris. 

The next day was bleak and cold. The military parade 
consisted of three divisions of about ten thousand men in 
each. The first was commanded by General Frederick D. 
Grant, of the Regular Army, a self-contained man who 
looked very much like his father, and whom I have 
encountered several times as I have gone through life. The 
second division, consisting of the troops of Delaware, Penn- 
sylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, was 
under my command, with Governors Preston Lea of Dela- 
ware, Edward C. Stokes of New Jersey and Edwin Warfield 
of Maryland commanding the troops of their states. The 
third division was commanded by Governor F. W. Higgins 
of New York. For the first time in my life I played the 
r61e of a major general. At the last minute Stokes of New 
Jersey fell by the wayside, it was said because of dread of 
the responsibility, and I had on the moment to put some one 
else in command of his brigade. At nine o'clock in the 
morning I bestrode a beautiful horse belonging to the pohce 
force in Philadelphia, and after forming my line beyond the 
capitol, and waiting on the hill in the cold wind for an hour 
or two, I rode down Pennsylvania Avenue in the presence 
376 



GOVERNOR 1905 

of 250,000 people. I was told that I received more plaudits 
than any other man who took part except the President. 
As we approached the reviewing stand I heard Roosevelt in 
his boisterous way, as he turned to the ladies behind him, 
shout : 

''Here comes Governor Pennypacker ! " 

It was my method of meeting Smith of the Press and Van 
Valkenburg of the North American, who for years by editorial 
and cartoon had been telling the people of the country that 
the Governor of Pennsylvania was afraid to ride a horse. 
They were blown out of the water and there was little said of 
the subject thereafter. We dismounted from our horses at 
5 p. M., having been in the saddle all day long. There is 
no need to tell what a physical strain such a proceeding 
imposes and it is no wonder that every inauguration day is 
accompanied with its toll of death. I concluded that it 
would be my last appearance on that stage. The Record 
reported: ''But of all these governors, Pennypacker 
received the hon's share of attention," and the Press said: 
"What is more, he rode remarkably well." 

We went to the inauguration ball and there met Mrs. 
Roosevelt, who told Mrs. Pennypacker that I had been very 
kind to her daughter Ethel. The Vice-President and Mrs. 
Fairbanks invited us to a reception and the Honorable 
Edward D. Morrell, Congressman from Pennsylvania, 
whose mother is the wife of John G. Johnson, gave a recep- 
tion to Mrs. Pennypacker and me which was largely 
attended. 

In my message to the legislature there had been pointed 
out the objections to the growing habit in that body of 
appointing commissions to do executive work as an encroach- 
ment upon the authority of another branch of the govern- 
ment In making provision for the Lewis and Clark 
Exposition in Oregon, the legislature again undertook to 
select the commission. The bill was vetoed upon that 
ground and the state was unrepresented in the celebration. 

377 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

As I have written, at the head of the National Guard 
when I became governor, was Major General Charles Miller, 
born in Alsace, a stout man, fluent in speech, agreeable in 
manner, with much bonhommie, and a faculty for getting 
along. Starting with nothing, he rose to association with 
Joseph C. Sibley and became a magnate of the Standard 
Oil Company and enormously wealthy. He had great 
capacity, was always helpful and knew how to get along with 
men. At the hotel he would say to the waiter: ''There is 
no ten-cent tip this time, " and putting down beside his plate 
a two-dollar bill, our party would receive with promptness the 
best that could be secured. He drank good wines and owned 
speedy horses. I am grateful to him for much assistance 
many times rendered in the work of the Guard. But he had 
neither the training of a soldier nor the special knowledge 
necessary to fit him for the command. General J. P. S. 
Gobin of Lebanon had seen real service in the war of the 
Rebellion and the war with Spain, had been lieutenant 
governor of the state and had been ranking brigadier general 
of the Guard, something of a martinet, with that rigidity 
and inadaptability which led men to call him a ''crank, " but 
able and in love with the work. Whenever the Guard was 
called into the service it was always Gobin and his brigade 
that received the encomiums of the military experts. But 
he was no match for Miller in the practical affairs of Ufe. 
Miller had held no higher rank than that of colonel on the 
staff of Brigadier General John A. Wiley. With abundant 
tact and abundant means, he made very large contributions 
to the political campaigns, and in Stone's administration 
he had been elevated over the head of his own chief, over 
the head of Gobin, and was made the major general in 
command. It was a rank injustice, but he had the support 
of all of the political forces and seemed secure. He made me 
some presents of bronze statuary, and in a hearty way would 
have done much more had it been permitted. I sent for him 
and explained to him, in as kindly a way as I knew how, my 
378 



GOVERNOR, 1905 

feeling that it was due to Gobin, his work and desert that 
I should put him in command. Miller was sadly disap- 
pointed, but showed the traits which gave him his strength. 
He had had trouble with his wife, leading to much gossip 
around his home, but had finally secured a divorce and a new 
spouse. He had arranged to take the present wife 
over to Alsace to introduce her to his people there and 
all he asked was that I should postpone the blow and 
let him wear his uniform and have the dignity of his 
position through the summer. To this suggestion I was 
glad to assent. It was a really painful duty, but it was 
performed. 

One morning I went into my office and found lying on 
my table appUcations for charters for twenty-nine water 
companies awaiting approval. It was a manifestation in 
the concrete of one of the very great and growing evils of 
our development, the insidious grasping by commerciahsm, 
following the course of the Church in the ancient time, of the 
necessities of Hfe as a means of profit. I at once sent a 
special message to the assembly, recommending that it 
take away from water companies the right of eminent 
domain. Such an act was passed and during the entire 
remainder of my term not more than three or four water 
companies were chartered. 

Among the visitors who were entertained at the executive 
mansion was General Fitzhugh Lee of Virginia, a nephew of 
General Robert E. Lee, and himself a distinguished figure in 
the War of the RebeUion and the war with Spain. Among 
my predilections is a sympathetic feeling for Virginia and the 
Virginians. Lee, a stout, robust and affable man, stayed 
over night with me and we became quite chummy. He had 
come to urge participation by the state in the forthcoming 
Jamestown Exposition, and he and I both made addresses 
at a meeting held in the Capitol. The result was that the 
legislature made an appropriation of $100,000 and arranged 
to take part in the exposition. Lee telegraphed to me: "I 

379 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

shall refuse ever to ride again to Gettysburg with a drawn 
sabre." Two weeks later he was dead. 

An official memorial service to the memory of Senator 
Quay was held by the senate and house on the evening of 
March 22d, at which I delivered the address which has been 
printed in various shapes since. 

During these later days of the session I was receiving 
much encomium, even from the city dailies, for the reason 
that they did not like the legislators, and they watched 
with pleasure, while the analysis, which had formerly been 
apphed to journalism, was now being applied to legislation. 
Cooper of the Media American wrote editorially: 

"Governor Pennypacker has proved to be the wisest, 
most discriminating and at the same time most thoroughly 
honest executive that ever sat in the Pennsylvania guber- 
natorial chair." 

And Moser of the Collegeville Independent: 

"Governor Pennypacker has been easily the most \arile, 
the most capable and in many respects the most popular 
executive since the days of Andrew G. Curtin." 

The session of the legislature ended on the 13th of April. 
A Department of Health had been created, to which had 
been given very great authority and a power which extended 
to the person of the individual citizen and might even be 
regarded as an infringement of his personal liberty. The 
value and permanence of the legislation would depend 
mainly upon the manner in which the department should be 
organized. It was at first suggested to me that it should 
be placed in charge of Dr. B. H. Warren, but that thought 
I instantly dismissed. I then had an interview with Dr. 
Charles B. Penrose, who had been verj^ much interested in 
the matter, and he named to me a gentleman connected with 
one of the schools in the western part of the state. I had a 
talk with this gentleman, but was still not satisfied. Then 
Dr. Penrose told me he thought Dr. Samuel G. Dixon, 
president of the Academy of Natural Sciences, would be 
380 




Group of Governor Pennypacker's Pennsylvania Constabulary 



GOVERNOR, 1905 

willing to undertake the task. That suggestion suited me 
exactly. Dixon consented and I made the appointment. 
Under his direction it has come to be accepted as the most 
important and efficient organization for this line of work 
in the United States. There is good ground for hope that 
many of the inflammatory diseases due to specific poisons, 
such as typhoid fever, smallpox, diphtheria and tuberculosis, 
may be in time stamped out of existence. 

The legislature also, upon my urgency, provided for a 
state poUce or constabulary, and here the same kind of 
question arose. Such a body, if organized upon political 
lines, would have tremendous power over the state and would 
be correspondingly dangerous. After talking over a number 
of persons, some of them connected with the Guard, and 
consulting with several persons, I tendered the position to 
John C. Groome, captain of the City Troop, who accepted. 
He proved to be just the man needed, of the right age, slim, 
erect, quick to see and to act, possessing a rare combination 
of decision of character and sound judgment. I told him I 
wanted a police force and absolutely nothing else. Not a 
man on the force was selected upon the recommendation 
of anybody. The men were all chosen upon the results of 
physical and mental examination and what political or 
religious creed any one of them professes is officially 
unknown. Groome has made the constabulary famous all 
over the United States. Two hundred and forty in number, 
they have maintained the peace within the state as was 
never done before. Not once since has it been necessary to 
call out the National Guard, and that vast expense has been 
saved. While organized labor has unwisely assailed them 
as " PennjT^acker's Cossacks," one of the greatest of their 
merits has been that they have saved labor from the oppres- 
sion of force and have done away with that kind of police 
intervention which came from men employed by the 
corporations. 

There were certain principles which underlay the dis- 

381 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

approval of those bills which were negatived. There was 
no extension of the right to take property by eminent 
domain, the effort to create new crimes by statute as an 
easy means of collecting debts or enforcing duties was ever 
looked upon with disfavor, and in no instance during my 
term did I permit increase in the number of the judiciary. 
Among the bills vetoed was one prepared under the auspices 
of eminent physicians and surgeons, ostensibly for the 
''Prevention of Idiocy," which authorized them to perform 
experiments upon the inmates of the institutions for the 
feeble-minded, and another urged by the osteopaths which 
provided for a third board of medical examiners. 

An act had been passed for uniting Allegheny City and 
Pittsburgh in one municipality. There was some protest, 
mainly on the part of those interested in maintaining a 
dual set of officials, and Governor Stone argued before me 
the objections at length, but I was heartily in favor of the 
project, because it would simplify the municipal government, 
lessen the expense and give Pennsylvania what no other 
state possesses — two great cities. In my message I had 
advocated the passage of the act and now I signed the bill. 
While I was being lauded in Pittsburgh, I was again being 
berated in Philadelphia. The Bullitt Bill, under which 
Philadelphia M^as governed, written by John C. Bullitt, a 
capable lawyer, concentrated all power in the hands of the 
mayor, upon the theory that in that way responsibility 
would be fixed. The mayor had the appointment of from 
seven to twelve thousand officials and this fact gave him 
great political power when he chose to exercise it. John 
Weaver, a lawyer, born in England, short, stocky and ener- 
getic, had been elected mayor by grace of the Republican 
organization. Then he turned on his old friends and sought 
repute as a reformer. Ere long he concluded that he had 
been deceived by his new associates and again recanted, but 
for the time being he was using his control over the officials 
for all it was worth politically against the Republican 
382 



GOVERNOR, 1905 

organization. Under the influence of Durham and others, 
an act was passed, taking away from the mayor the appoint- 
ment of certain heads of departments and vesting it in the 
city councils. It is extremely unlikely that Durham so 
acted out of regard for the principles of government and 
altogether probable that he was trying to get ahead of 
Weaver and to provide against like conduct on the part of 
future mayors. The newspapers of the city, equally 
impervious to any consideration of what would be for the 
benefit of the municipality, were against anything the 
organization wanted or tried to do and, therefore, with great 
violence opposed the measure. They called it vile names 
and made ugly pictures. They assumed that I would veto 
the bill. They argued that my integrity and my zeal for 
the welfare of the community and all my well-known great 
virtues left no other course open. Delegations of lawyers, 
preachers and citizens came to Harrisburg and argued the 
matter before me. I wrote an opinion and, resting on the 
ground that it involved a matter of governmental policy, 
that the bill had been passed by a majority of over two-thirds 
of the members of the legislature, more than enough to 
overcome the veto of the governor, that the representatives 
from Philadelphia had so voted and that it was in line with 
the democratic tendencies of the time, I signed the bill. 
Incidentally it may be added that, except in cases of excep- 
tional fitness, no man born abroad, like John Weaver or 
Rudolph Blankenburg, ought to be elected mayor of Phila- 
delphia, for the reason that, having no part in her traditions, 
he cannot be in sympathy with the aspirations and thought 
of her people. He would be continually trying to make 
her imitate Hamburg or some other European town which 
he has abandoned, criticising the ways which made her 
famous, sending the Liberty Bell to be exhibited along with 
fat cattle at state fairs, and doing similar antics which show 
his misfit. 

On the 26th of April the Republican Convention met and 

383 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

nominated J. Lee Plummer for State Treasurer and Charles 
E. Rice, James A. Beaver and George B. Orlady for judges 
of the Superior Court. One of the resolutions set forth : 

''The intense Pennsylvanianism of Governor Samuel W. 
Pennypacker, the rugged honesty of his administration and 
the independence, fearlessness, wisdom and watchful care 
with which he has executed the laws, safeguarding in every 
possible way all the interests of this commonwealth, com- 
mand our admiration and respect." 

At two o'clock on the morning of May 11th, we were 
aroused by a call on the telephone for help. Near Steelton, 
a freight train on the Pennsylvania Railroad met with an 
accident, the result of which was that one or two of the 
cars fell on the west-bound track. Just then the express 
passenger train, going westward, came along, struck these 
cars and exploded a lot of dynamite on the freight train. 
It was a remarkable combination of unfortuitous events. 
About twenty people were killed and about a hundred 
injured. On one of the sleepers were James R. Tindle and 
his wife, the daughter of Senator Knox, who were both 
somewhat cut with glass. She is a little woman, but she 
showed her breeding and at once took command of the 
situation. She walked in her night dress and bare feet a 
mile along the track to Steelton, and there suggested calling 
me up at the mansion. Bromley Wharton went for the 
Tindles in an automobile, brought them to the mansion, 
where they were put to bed and treated, and there they 
remained for a day or two. The Senator, coming on from 
Washington, found that they had not been seriously injured. 

On my suggestion the legislature appropriated $30,000 
for the purpose of erecting an equestrian statue of Anthony 
Wayne at Valley Forge. The commission appointed con- 
sisted of Richard M. Cadwalader, president of the Pennsyl- 
vania Society Sons of the Revolution, John Armstrong 
Herman, great-grandson of General John Armstrong, and 
Colonel John P. Nicholson, the authority on the history of 
384 



GOVERNOR, 1905 

the War of the Rebelhon. The sculptor selected was H. K. 
Bush-Brown. I myself went to his studio at Newburgh-on- 
the-Hudson to examine the statue and rejected the first 
model because General Wayne was represented with his eyes 
turned to the ground. I wanted him looking toward the 
enemy on the front, with nothing to indicate excitement 
or to lessen the recognition of the seriousness and thought- 
fulness of his character. The statue in bronze was later 
placed on the outer line at Valley Forge where the Penn- 
sylvania troops stood and it faces toward the position of 
the British in Philadelphia. It is regarded as an unusual 
artistic success, and is the first recognition ever given the 
great soldier by the state. 

Justice John Dean of the Supreme Court having died, I, 
on the 8th of June, appointed Judge John Stewart of 
Chambersburg to fill the vacancy. I had had many associa- 
tions with Stewart — a slender, vigorous and eloquent 
Scotch-Irishman ; and only a month before we met at Middle 
Spring, near Shippensburg, where a monument was dedi- 
cated and he delivered the oration. He has proven to be a 
useful member of our highest court. It is only just to 
Senator Penrose to say that he was not only satisfied with 
the selection, but himself suggested that it be made. 

Sunday, June 11th, I made an address at Manheim, in 
Lancaster County, on the occasion of the presentation of the 
red rose which had been reserved as the rental for the land 
given by Baron Stiegel to the church. It is rather an 
impressive and idealistic ceremony, attracting always much 
attention. Miss Boyer, one of the descendants of Stiegel, 
presented to me a large glass goblet made by him which she 
had inherited. 

I had long been dissatisfied with the conduct of the 
Insurance Department at the head of which was Israel W. 
Durham, the most powerful political leader in Philadelphia, 
a situation which had been left to me by my predecessor. 
The business was well conducted under the management of 
25 385 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

the Chief Clerk McCullough, but my feeling was that 
Durham ought to devote at least a part of his time and 
thought in attention to it. I wrote to him October 11th, 
1904, saying to him in effect that I expected him to spend at 
least one day of the week in his department at Harrisburg. 
The situation was complicated by the fact that his health 
was being undermined by disease. In answer to my letter, 
I received this reply: 

PmLADELPHiA, Pa., Octobei 18, 1904. 
(Personal and confidential.) 
Honorable Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Executive Chamber, Harrisburg, Pa. 
Dear Governor: 

Mr. Durham has casually in conversation taken up with me 
your communication of October 11th, regarding the propriety of 
his going once a week to Harrisburg, and calling his attention to 
the editorial in the Evening Bulletin. I suggested to Mr. Durham 
that perhaps I might take this matter up with you more freely 
than he would like to do, and I requested him to leave your com- 
munication with me for that purpose. As a matter of fact, the 
Insurance Department has an ofl5ce in Philadelphia, at Tenth and 
Chestnut streets, and has for many years had an office at that 
place. Three-fourths of the current business of the department 
is done in the City of Philadelphia. There has been absolutely 
no criticism upon the administration of the department since Mr. 
Diu-ham has been commissioner. A gentleman of such independ- 
ent proclivities as Mr. Charles Piatt advised me last fall that the 
administration of the Insurance Department under Mr. Durham 
was more satisfactory than they had ever had it, and expressed 
his gratification in a substantial way by inclosing me a voluntary 
contribution of $100 for the State Committee. Mr. West, a 
director of The Union League, has expressed himself to me in a 
similar manner. Of course, Mr. Durham has been compelled to 
be absent a good deal from Pennsylvania on account of his health, 
but when he is home I know that the business of the department 
receives his personal attention, and there is no one having busi- 
ness with the department who cannot see him readily. As I have 
said, the large proportion of those having business with the 
department can see him more conveniently to themselves in 
Philadelphia than at any other place. 

386 



GOVERNOR, 1905 

Mr. Durham is of a sensitive nature and I know would not 
want to go contrary to any emphatically expressed wish of your- 
self upon the subject, and I believe it would be a very great hard- 
ship upon him in the present condition of his health for you to 
insist upon him going to Harrisburg just at this time when there 
would be absolutely no definite object pertaining to his ofl&ce 
accomplished thereby. I suppose after January he wall be in 
Harrisburg anyhow and will then be able to conform substan- 
tially with the suggestion made by you. The criticism of the 
Bulletin hardly seems to me to be based on any good ground in 
the utter absence of complaint upon the part of those having 
business with the department, and in view of the fact that an office 
is open at Tenth and Chestnut streets in Philadelphia, I hope 
you will not insist upon your suggestion. 

Yours truly, 

Boies Penrose. 

I had opposed every effort made by the departments to 
establish branch offices outside of Harrisburg, where they 
would be beyond personal supervision and, therefore, the 
argumentative part of this letter made little impression. 
However, I wrote to Penrose that if Durham were ill I would 
wait until he recovered his health. He then went to Cali- 
fornia. Upon his return and after learning that he had 
taken up his political activities I again insisted, and it ended 
in his resigning the office July 1st. Penrose asked me at 
all events to appoint David Martin in his place, which I did, 
and I wrote a kindly letter to Durham expressing apprecia- 
tion of the condition of the department. This conduct was 
not at all pleasing to those who wanted me to apply appro- 
brious epithets to him, and it was no alleviation, rather an 
aggravation, that Martin attended faithfully to his duties. 
"Just draw a large black fine around Governor Penny- 
packer's administration as the last and worst of its kind in 
the pohtical history of Pennsylvania," was the spirited 
comment of the Philadelphia Record. 

Frank M. Fuller, the apparently robust and entirely 
upright capable and agreeable secretary of the common- 
wealth, died on the 10th of July and three days later was 

387 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

buried at his home in Uniontown. Penrose and I were 
among the honorary pall-bearers. The after-occurrences 
at the funeral were astonishing. The services at the grave 
were scarcely concluded when we were hurried away in 
automobiles to a luxurious dinner with cocktails and wines, 
at the home of Jonah V. Thompson, a plain and quiet old 
gentleman, who had made a fortune of $30,000,000 in coal 
and coal lands. The home was a castle up on a hill-top with 
stables and other buildings in the rear in which a sybarite 
might be willing to live. In front was a paved courtyard, 
enclosed by a wall about two feet high, filled with flowering 
plants, native and exotic. It was entered, as the visitor 
came up the hill, by an approach of two or three steps. 
When we arrived it was perhaps half-past two o'clock in the 
afternoon. At the top of the steps, at this time in the day, 
in full dress considerably emphasized, stood the mistress of 
the household, who had perhaps experienced life through 
thirty summers. A fan hung at her feet. It was suspended 
from her neck by a chain of large diamonds which almost 
reached the pave. Taking our hands, she led the Senator 
and me inside to the dining table. I sat on her right and 
the Senator on her left. The conversation here was con- 
tinuous and, to say the least, lively. At the other end of 
the table sat Jonah, grum and silent. The situation was 
too manifest to be misunderstood. The exuberant specimen 
of young womanhood was describing to me her manner of 
swimming. Much to the amusement of Penrose and in 
absolute innocence, I inquired: 

"Can you swim on your back, too?" 

"Oh, yes," she replied. 

In the exhilaration of the moment she set up a game on 
us. She had a French chauffeur and she instructed him that 
he was to take the Senator and me into the town and, on 
the way, show us how he could run a car. I unwittingly 
took another car and saw the Senator shoot by cUnging to 
his seat, pale and distraught. 
388 



GOVERNOR, 1905 

The next day I was at the camp of the National Guard 
at Mount Gretna and there, on foot, as was my wont, in- 
spected, personally, each man and held the review from 
a barouche. 

On the 24th of July, Senators Penrose and Knox visited 
me at Pennypacker's Mills and there talked to me about the 
question of a special session of the legislature, which was 
being very generally discussed, especially in Philadelphia, 
with reference to the affairs of that city. I had been con- 
sidering the matter, but a man trained in the law always 
has the sense that there must be a legal justification for that 
which he does. The demand had been mainly local. Just 
at this juncture the Supreme Court decided the Greater 
Pittsburgh act to be unconstitutional and furnished the 
justification. A serious matter affecting the interests of 
the western part of the state, for which the legislature had 
endeavored to provide, had failed. At that instant my 
qualms disappeared and a special session became inevitable. 
Penrose had heard that I was considering the matter and 
came to urge his opposition. He also wanted me to appoint 
J. A. Berkey of Somerset County to the place made vacant 
by the death of Fuller. A few days later I gave that posi- 
tion to Robert McAfee, a much stronger man, and made 
Berkey Commissioner of Banking, which satisfied him and 
the Senator. 

The following correspondence shows the attitude of the 
party people toward the question of a special session : 

Pittsburgh, August 16, 1905. 
My dear Governor Pennypacker: 

I have just run down from Canada for a few days and take 
time to express my appreciation of your appointment of Mr. 
McAfee as Secretary of the Commonwealth, which occurred 
during my absence. I have known Mr, McAfee intimately for 
over thirty-five years and each year's acquaintance has added 
to my regard for him. He is a sterling man and I believe will 
strengthen your administration. 

Since my last talk with you I have thought considerably on 

389 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

the subject of our conversation (the caUing of an extra session for 
the consideration of a Greater Pittsburgh Bill) and am confirmed 
in my opinion that it would be a great mistake to call the legis- 
lature together either for that or any other purpose unless in a 
case of extreme emergency. I know that there are some matters 
of legislation, including that for a Greater Pittsburgh, which you 
would like to see consummated during your term as governor, 
but I doubt if these things could be accomplished through the 
medium of the present legislature. Next spring matters might 
be in such shape that it would be advisable to call an extra session, 
but to do so now I would regard as extremely impolitic. I hope 
you will pardon me for thrusting my view upon you in this way, 
but the best interests of the state and party will be best sub- 
served by following this plan. 

With great respect, I remain, very sincerely yours, 

George T. Oliver. 

August 21, 1905. 
My dear Governor: 

Rmnors are flying all over the state that great pressure is 
being brought to induce you to call the legislature in extra session. 
That you will not be led into such a cruel trap I feel most confi- 
dent. No true friend of yours or of our party will advise, much 
less urge, you to commit such a crime against yourself or the 
state you love so well. Men who take shadows for substance, 
men who place self above their party, their state, and our nation, 
may for personal reasons want an extra session, but no true 
friend of Pennsylvania will ask you to commit such a blunder. 
What justification can be put forth to warrant such a call in the 
face of existing conditions? On you alone will fall the odium that 
such a session would result in, for I tell you, Governor, you could 
no more confine the members of the house to the specifications 
in your proclamation than you could change the course of the 
heavenly bodies, so please don't be persuaded by the Syrians 
who would, for the sake of some personal gain, lull you to a 
destructive sleep. Every one in Pennsylvania knows that you 
favored, and now favor, the decent things so earnestly advo- 
cated by our dear departed friend, Colonel Quay. Every one 
knows that it was through no fault of yours that personal regis- 
tration, uniform primaries and the apportionment of our state 
failed, therefore, don't permit the enemies of those natural 
Republican principles to use you to wash their filthy garments 
on the floor of the House of Representatives. 

390 



GOVERNOR, 1905 

Governor, I know, as well as any human being can know 
such a thing, that Matthew Stanley Quay, if here, would tell 
you not to listen to such appeals. I say to you. Governor, in all 
the sincerity of my heart that to call the legislature together 
at this or any other time during the remainder of your term 
would prove the most disastrous act you could possibly commit. 
Don't dim the lustre of your splendid record, but go on pursuing 
the splendid good road you have bailt throughout the length and 
breadth of our great state, and when your term ends you will feel 
grateful to yourself and pleased with the real friends like myself 
who urge you to keep clear of the vicious trap set for you by men 
who pretend sincerity where only selfishness, greed and hypoc- 
risy lurk. 

In writing this you know I have no motive save my love and 
affection for you and I am confident you will so understand. 

Faithfully your friend, 

J. C. Delanet. 

At that time Wesley R. Andrews was chairman of the 
Republican State Committee. He wrote to me: 

August 24, 1905. 
Dear Governor: 

My attention has been called to articles in the newspapers to 
the effect that the question as to the advisability of calling an 
extra session of the legislature was being considered, which 
statement, in the absence of corroboration, I do not credit, having 
in mind the general unreliability of the comments contained in a 
certain class of so-called newspapers. However, the matter is of 
sufficient importance to prompt me to write to you to the effect 
that having knowledge of the political situation in every county 
in Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia and Allegheny, I desire 
to register my emphatic protest against the calling of an extra 
session of the legislature, if such action is contemplated, and for 
the reason the Republican voters of Pennsylvania are not in 
accord with such sentiment, believing, as they do, that the local 
matters in Philadelphia are not of sufficient importance to warrant 
the assembling of the legislature, at a large expense to the tax- 
payers, for the purpose of acting upon the recommendation of a 
few timid persons totally unfamihar with the real situation. 
Again the calling together of an extra session of the legislature 
would, in my opinion, ruin the leaders of the Republican party in 

391 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Pennsylvania, place the party in an equivocal position and shatter, 
if not disrupt, the party organization. The question to my mind 
is not at all debatable and should not be for one moment con- 
sidered; and in this matter I not only speak for myself but for 
the great organization of which I am the executive head. I do 
not know that such a thought has occurred to you and I sincerely 
hope it has not, but if it has, I pray that you will give the matter 
your usual very careful consideration, having in view, as I believe 
you always have, the best interests of the Republican party of 
the great State of Pennsylvania. I speak thus strongly and 
warmly, for in my opinion there is but one side to the question 
and that to pander to the advice of the timid at this time means 
disruption to the party, great and overwhelming. 

Apropos to this question, I inclose herewith a letter I received 
yesterday from my brother, three times chairman of the Republi- 
can State Committee of Pennsylvania, an ex-member of the 
Pennsylvania State Senate and twice a member of the Pennsyl- 
vania House of Representatives, for your information regarding 
the way an extra session of the legislature is viewed from the 
standpoint of a level-headed man who has ever been on the firing 
line when the interests of the Republican party were at stake. 
I value his opinion greatly because he was a trusted lieutenant of 
the late Senator Quay and represents that great army whom 
Senator Quay in his lifetime designated as the "men in blouses." 

With assurances of my esteem and regard, I am 
Yours sincerely, 

W. R. Andrews, Chairman. 

He enclosed this letter from W. H. Andrews, generally 
designated as "Bull" Andrews. 

Pittsburgh, Pa., August 22, 1905. 
Dear Brother: 

I see by the morning papers that the report is that Penrose 
is in favor of calling an extra session of the legislature, etc., etc. 
Now you get hold of the Senator and tell him for God's sake not 
to think of such a thing. If he allows this to be done it will cer- 
tainly be his doing-up. He must assume to the dignity that it is 
a great mistake to have the legislature called. There is nothing 
to call them together for, and it will be the greatest mistake he 
ever made to have the governor call the extra session. You must 
get hold of Penrose and pound this into him. Now do not allow 
392 



GOVERNOR, 1905 

him to go any further with this fool play, but put a stop to it. 
I will try and get down there in a few days and see. Now you 
give this matter your prompt attention and get this idea out of 
the mind of the Senator. The people do not want any such thing 
to happen. Let the Senator take that stand and let him appeal 
to the people and they will support him in his views. 

Your affectionate brother, 

W. H. Andrews. 

August 24, 1905. 
Dear Governor: 

After the fullest investigation and most careful consideration 
since I saw you last, I am more fully persuaded than ever that an 
extra session of the legislature is out of the question. I have 
hoped to see you before this to discuss the matter more fully in 
detail with you, but have been unable to reach you at Harrisburg 
or get definite information as to your movements. I am in 
Philadelphia every day and in case you come to town I will be 
very glad to meet you at the Historical Society rooms or any 
other place convenient to you. The state ticket will be at the 
head of the Bigelow and Flinn local tickets in Allegheny County, 
so that we will poll a heavy majority there. Every other county 
in Pennsylvania is in excellent shape, outside of Philadelphia, 
with the exception of some eight or ten counties in which trouble 
of strictly local character exists. There is absolutely nothing in 
the nature of a concerted move through the state, and I do not 
recall an election for state treasurer in the last ten years, with the 
exception of the election of the present incumbent, Mathues, in 
which there appeared to be as little serious disaffection. We are 
all quite confident that the bottom has dropped out of the fight 
in Philadelphia and that the new ticket which we intend to put 
up in a short time will be elected by a substantial majority. I 
sincerely trust, therefore, that you will not press the suggestion 
of an extra session and will let me know when I can see you on 
your next visit to Philadelphia. 

Yours sincerely, 

Boies Penrose. 

It is quite evident from this correspondence that the 
politicians had learned that I contemplated calling an extra 
session and, fearing the consequences, tried to dissuade me, 
that they, including Penrose, were from the start opposed 

393 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

to the project and that the newspapers, with their usual 
inabihty to make a correct diagnosis of what is going on 
before them, attributed the movement to the Senator. The 
objections were that an extra session would mean a large 
outlay, that Governor Pattison had ignominiously failed 
when he called such a session, and that it would be used 
by insincere Democrats, supported by the press, to make 
political capital out of the situation. They were all more or 
less well grounded. There were certain measures, however, 
which I was anxious to see enacted, mainly the Greater 
Pittsburgh Bill, and reapportionment of the state, about 
which I was in dead earnest, and I had already determined 
to call the session, but not until after the election. For 
the postponement there were two controlUng reasons. If 
it were called before, it would have been said that the object 
was to affect the election and both the deliberations and 
results would be influenced by political considerations. 
If the Republican party should be defeated, as I believed it 
would be, my interference would be assigned as the cause. 
At this juncture I concluded to sell the greater part of 
my library. It was the most complete collection of the 
early literature relating to Pennsylvania which any indi- 
vidual had ever possessed. It is impossible that any man 
shall ever again have one of like importance. To part with 
it was to tear up forty years of my life by the roots. I had 
made a secret covenant with the commonwealth, unknown 
to the commonwealth, that if my future were provided for 
by a return to the Bench or otherwise, this record of its life 
should be preserved intact. One of the consequences of its 
failure to keep this unknown covenant is the loss which 
happened, greater to it than to me. I kept the faith for 
two years and a half. Dm*ing that time the books, 12,000 
of them, had remained in my house in town, a house which 
cost me $13,000. I could not rent the house or sell it, 
because there were the books. They were ever in danger of 
fire. They were ever in danger of theft, and now the time 
394 



GOVERNOR, 1905 

had come when it became manifest to me that no depend- 
ence was to be placed upon the promises of the poHticians, 
that the people were utterly indifferent, and that it was 
necessary for me to be giving some attention to my own 
needs. Retaining two or three thousand books relating 
to the family and to the neighborhood of my home, the 
Mennonite books, the Schwenkfelder books and those of 
special interest and affection, the rest were sold. I was 
too busy with the affairs of the state to give the sales 
attention, and what I could have myself sold without ex- 
pense, could I have given the time to it, for $75,000 or 
more, netted me between $27,000 and $28,000. Then I 
rented my house. 

The Republicans of Chester County, on the 9th of Sep- 
tember, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of 
the party. About twenty thousand people gathered at 
West Chester. Vice-President Fairbanks and I rode around 
in a barouche together and, with Marlin E. Olmsted, one 
of the very ablest men in the state, made speeches. Trans- 
portation was over-burdened and I rode to Phoenixville in a 
baggage car, sitting on a chest. 

On the 15th, along with N. B. Critchfield, Secretary of 
Agriculture, I went to Richland in Lebanon County to 
overlook the farm of Isaac S. Long, who is the champion 
corn grower of the United States. He has succeeded in 
raising 140 bushels of shelled corn to the acre. He hopes to 
reach 200 bushels. Upon land naturally fertile, he applies 
barnyard manure and lime heavily and eschews commercial 
fertilizers. While the corn is growing he goes through his 
field and selects the ears for seed and the seed is kept warm 
through the winter. He rejects every stalk bearing two 
ears, contending that one well-developed ear is preferable. 
He sells seed corn in New York at $5 a bushel. Upon my 
pointing out a quantity of wild carrots on his place, he said 
they were not objectionable, since the long roots went down 
into the subsoil and aided in rendering it available. 

395 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

On the 28th, as chairman of a commission consisting of 
Colonel John P. Nicholson, Daniel Eberly and myself, I 
presented the statue in bronze, of a private cavalryman on 
his horse, to the care of the borough of Hanover, erected by 
the state to commemorate the cavalry battle there anterior 
to Gettysburg. The statue is a good figure and a success. 
When I began to speak the cannon began to boom a salute 
and every six words were punctuated with a shot. 

Harrisburg had a home week during the first week in 
October and was given up to festivities and celebrations. 
On Tuesday, from a stand in the park, General Horace 
Porter, Governor William A. Stone, General Thomas J. 
Stewart and I made addresses. Porter, a rugged-looking 
man, a brigadier close to Grant, and later Minister to 
France, belongs to a family which has contributed more men 
of distinction to public life in America than any other in 
Pennsylvania. Olmsted, always efficient, had general charge 
of the demonstration. 

The legislature, upon my insistence, had made an appro- 
priation of $375,000 to the City of Philadelphia to assist 
in deepening the channel of the Delaware, upon condition 
that the city devote a similar sum to the purpose. Neither 
Mayor Weaver nor any one else in Philadelphia gave the 
matter the slightest attention and the councils were about 
to adjourn. I then wrote to the mayor teUing him it was a 
subject of the utmost importance. The letter was made 
public, councils made the additional appropriations, and I 
saw that the check was sent by the state treasurer. It was 
the first direct aid given by the state to that city in modern 
times. 

There was a Republican meeting in the Academy of 
Music, Philadelphia, on the 18th of October. It was a 
gloomy time. Everybody had the sense that defeat was 
coming. Fairbanks, Taft, Foraker, Knox and Carson all 
declined to be present, and the newspapers said I would 
not go. Those around me at Harrisburg advised me not to 
396 



GOVERNOR, 1905 

identify myself with a failing cause. Penrose wrote me a 
pathetic letter. It was a situation which appealed to man- 
hood. The time to render assistance is when it is needed, 
and I wrote to Penrose that I would be with him and speak. 
Only Peter Boyd, the president of the Colonial Trust Com- 
pany, an intelligent and whole-souled little man, who later 
committed suicide, and I were on the platform with Penrose 
to speak. 

The Enterprise National Bank of Allegheny failed, 
having on deposit more than a million dollars of the funds 
of the state. These deposits were amply secured, but it was 
certain there would be an uproar and I did not want the 
responsibility of the national government to be shifted upon 
the state. At once I wrote to President Roosevelt and 
created a sensation of my own for what was regarded as my 
temerity. 

October 25, 1905. 
To the President, 

Washington, D. C. 
Sir: 

The Enterprise National Bank, doing business in Allegheny, 
Pa., recently failed, having at the time among its deposits 
$1,030,000 of the moneys of this commonwealth. These moneys 
were deposited upon the faith of the stability of the institution 
arising through its organization as a national bank, and because 
of these deposits the commonwealth is much interested in the 
ascertainment of the condition of its financial affairs. Our com- 
missioner of banking has no control over it and no power to make 
any such investigation. Since it was organized under federal 
law and is subject to your supervision, I write to ask that a full, 
complete and careful investigation may be made, so that every- 
thing connected with the condition of its affairs and the causes 
which have led to such condition may be fully disclosed. I am 
ready to render all the assistance in my power to secure a thorough 
ascertainment of the facts. 

I am, sir, with respect, 

Very truly yours, 

Samuel W. Pennypacker. 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

This was a course without precedent and was a practical 
assertion of state rights. A state ventured to call on the 
nation to perform its duty. This bank failure was at once 
exploited by the pohtical orators and it came just at a time 
to destroy all hopes of the election of the Republican candi- 
date for state treasurer. At the election, November 7th, 
Wilham H. Berry, a garrulous, kindly, ignorant, good- 
mannered slouch, who had been born in Illinois, come east 
to seek his fortune, and failed to find it, was chosen by the 
people to manage the financial affairs of the commonwealth. 
On the 11th, without further consultation with anybody, I 
called an extra session of the assembly to meet January 15, 
1906, and consider legislation upon the following subjects: 

First. — To enable contiguous cities in the same counties 
to be united in one municipality in order that the people 
may avoid the unnecessary burdens of maintaining separate 
city governments. 

Second. — To increase the interest paid by banks, trust 
companies and similar institutions for the use of state 
moneys; to impose proper limitations upon the amount of 
such moneys to be held by each of such institutions; to 
make it a misdemeanor to pay or receive, to offer or request 
any money or valuable thing or promise for the use of such 
moneys, other than the interest payable to the state, and 
to adopt such measures as may be necessary for the 
protection of the public moneys. 

Third. — Reapportionment of the state into senatorial 
and representative districts. 

Fourth. — To provide for the personal registration of 
voters. 

Fifth. — To provide for the government of cities of the 
first class and the proper distribution of the power exercised 
by such municipalities. 

Sixth. — To designate the amount to be expended each 
year in the erection of county bridges and to take such other 
measures in regard to them as safety may require. 
398 



GOVERNOR, 1905 

Seventh. — To abolish fees in the offices of the Secretary 
of the Commonwealth and the Insurance Commissioner. 

There was great excitement throughout the state and all 
sorts of discussion. The purpose was to prevent the elimina- 
tion of Penrose. It was to help Knox. It was to remove 
the stains from my administration. It was due to the 
results of the election and, so far as the thought of the 
newspapers went, there was not one of them to seize the 
simple explanation that there was a man at the head of 
affairs doing what he could, with the circumstances and 
forces surrounding him, to benefit the commonwealth 
and doing it successfully. All failed to recognize that 
most of the recommendations were only dupHcations 
of former messages. Knox, who had been in favor 
of the movement from the beginning, came out warmly in 
its support. 

On the 25th, at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia, I pre- 
sented to the American cruiser ''Pennsylvania" a set of 
silver on behalf of the state which had cost $25,000 and was 
the most elaborate and costly given by any of the states to 
vessels named in their honor. It was specially designed by 
J. E. Caldwell & Company of Philadelphia. The chief 
piece was ornamented by casts of the heads of the chief 
historical personages of the state, selected by me. Quay 
had been much interested in the matter and it was because 
of his desire that the bill was passed making the appropria- 
tion. He, Penrose and I were the commission having the 
matter in charge. 

Monuments to the Pennsylvania soldiers who gave up 
their lives at Andersonville and fought at Chattanooga, had 
been erected and were now to be handed over by the state 
to the national government. In order to save time and 
expense, Stewart had arranged to have one journey cover 
both events. His plan was to go by sea to Savannah and 
thence across Georgia to Andersonville and Chattanooga. 
The generals and their wives, the colonels and their wives, 

399 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

the governor and his wife and daughter, Eliza B., formed 
a jolly party when they met on the boat on the evening of 
December 1st. On the way down the Delaware there was a 
good dinner to eat, and there were mirth and jollity and the 
company of fair women. Alas! the gaiety soon ended and 
the women soon disappeared, to be seen no more until we 
reached Savannah. A storm raged at sea. The boat, a 
fruit vessel, was only about half-loaded. When we were off 
Hatteras the vessel was thrown around by the waves in a 
way such as I had never seen before. Mrs. Pennypacker 
was thrown out of her chair and returned home with a black 
eye. I got up in the night and was tossed into a corner with 
some crockery and badly bruised. All were seasick except 
my daughter and myself. One morning I started to go from 
the saloon down to the dining-room for breakfast, but the 
brass covering of the stairway was going in five different 
directions with great rapidity and I called to the steward 
to bring my breakfast up to the saloon. Along one side 
stood a sofa. He put a small table in front of the sofa 
and, placing the tray on the table, held them secure while 
I sat on the sofa and ate. Presently came a great lurch. 
First went the steward, the table and tray following, then 
the governor and then the sofa, and they were all piled up 
promiscuously together against the wall at the far side of 
the room. I ate another breakfast sitting on the floor 
propped against the wall for support. 

In Savannah the lazy darkies, the magnolias, the moss 
hanging over the trees, the suavity of the man who meets 
you, are all very attractive. We arrived at 7.30 a. m. and 
hastened to the De Soto Hotel, where we were welcomed 
in a speech by Mayor Myers, to which I responded. Then 
we were taken in automobiles through the country to 
Bethesda, an orphan school for boys founded by George 
Whitefield and still flourishing. There I stood on the steps 
of the building and addressed the boys. Afterward we were 
taken to Bannon Lodge, where the mayor gave us a luncheon 
400 



GOVERNOR, 1905 

and then we returned to Savannah, having made a round of 
about twenty miles. 

I ventured an interview on the negro question, which 
was pubHshed and kindly received. 

The solution of that question is to treat the negro kindly. 
Give him a chance to work. The rest will come along. Develop- 
ment will come soonest and best from the exercise of such facul- 
ties as he has. The negro ought to be at work. It is a mistake 
for him to try to grow too fast. All substantial growth is slow. 
The Southern people can best solve the question here where con- 
ditions are fixed. The old Roman thought that there were no 
noble men but Romans, and yet the Germans poured in upon them 
and taught them a far different lesson. Modern Italy is the 
outcome. So is France. You people have to take what there is 
about you and make the best of it. Greece did not kill the 
Helots. She accepted them. That hardy race of tillers of the 
soil, known as villains in England, are today the backbone of 
that country — the Enghsh people itself. 

From Savannah, through a country apparently not very 
thrifty, we went to Atlanta, an enterprising modern city 
exemplifying the new life of the South. There Governor 
Joseph M. Terrell and Mrs. Terrell gave us a reception at 
the executive mansion. A young lady about nineteen came 
up to be presented and the governor, introducing her, said : 

"This is the most beautiful young lady in Atlanta, and 
I want you to kiss her." Southern hospitality grated a 
little on Northern phlegm. The girl stood blushing before 
me. I said to her: ''That is not the first time I have known 
a man to try to give away what does not belong to him." 
I did not kiss her. Possibly it was a mistake. 

At Atlanta I met the state treasurer and this colloquy 
occurred. 

/.—"What is the length of Georgia?" 

He. — "About four hundred miles." 

/. — "A hundred miles longer than Pennsylvania. What 
is the breadth of Georgia'" 

He. — "About three hundred miles." 
26 401 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

/. — "A hundred miles broader than Pennsylvania. 
What are your revenues?" 

He. — ''About a million dollars, but it takes a good deal of 
that to pay the interest on the debt. What are the revenues 
of Pennsylvania?" 

/. — ''About twenty-five million dollars a year." 

ffe.— "What is your debt'" 

I. — "We have none." 

He. — "Great Gawd! twenty-five million dollars of 
revenue and no debt!" 

At Americus, the nearest point to Andersonville upon the 
railroad, and about twelve miles distant, a crowd gathered 
in the town hall and a young lawyer named Robert E. Lee 
made an address of welcome, to which I replied. He had 
committed his speech to memory, and was much embarrassed, 
but it was couched in the best of tone and great kindhness. 

At Andersonville were six hundred Pennsylvania soldiers, 
who had been imprisoned there during the war and who had 
been sent there by the state forty years afterward to take a 
last look at the place. It was a solemn occasion and the 
memories were all painful. In presenting the impressive 
memorial to the United States, I said: 

Six hundred survivors of the war which ended forty years 
ago, the commander-in-chief of the National Guard of Pennsyl- 
vania and his military staff, the major general commanding that 
Guard and his three brigadier generals have come a distance of 
one thousand miles to dedicate a memorial. What is its signifi- 
cance? " What mean ye by these stones? " It is true of nations, 
as it is of men, that they may rise on stepping stones of their dead 
selves to higher things. But the pathway is ever attended by 
indescrible sufferings. During the Revolutionary War, the Con- 
tinental Army won but two great battles, and yet that war ended 
in success. Its spirit was typified, not by the victories at Sara- 
toga and Yorktown, but by the sufferings at Valley Forge. The 
Dutch struggle for independence had but few victories, but it 
lasted eighty years and the power of Spain, then the mightiest 
of nations, was broken. Christianity, the most important influ- 
ence in the development of man in the history of the world, is 

402 



GOVERNOR, 1905 

exemplified not by knights in armor and chariots, but by Him 
who was nailed to the cross, Who regenerated the sons of men, 
wearing not a helmet but a crown of thorns. When the early 
impressions of the war have in time become less vivid, a calm 
judgment will show that the valor of the soldiers on the field of 
Gettysburg was no more potent factor than the endurance best 
exhibited in the prison pens of Andersonville. The men who 
perished here have not died in vain. Through their deaths the 
government has taken on a new life and even Georgia has grown 
mightier than ever before because of what they did and suffered. 
In behalf of the commonwealth, I accept this monument, 
reflecting credit, as it does, upon the commission in charge of its 
erection, because of its magnificent proportions and artistic 
effects, and I present it to you, sir, as the representative of the 
national government with a full faith that here it will stand, for 
all time to come, as a testimonial to the suffering and valor of 
those soldiers who lost their lives that the country might survive. 

General E. A. Carman, United States Volunteers, ac- 
cepted the memorial. 

I wandered on foot over the field. An old soldier came 
to me and said that when he was here he knew and bunked 
with a man named Pennypacker. He went with me and 
showed me the place, upon the opposite side of a little 
stream from the spring which is said to have miraculously 
begun to j3ow after the prison was established, where they 
had dug a sort of cave in the side of a hill in which to sleep. 

"And what became of him?" I asked. 

* ' Oh ! He died of the scurvy." 

On returning home, I looked up the record in Bates' 
history of the Pennsylvania volunteers and found him 
described there as ''Missing in action." Such is fame and 
such often the rewards of effort. 

On the 8th, I accepted the monument erected for the 
109th Pennsylvania Regiment at Orchard Knob, near Look- 
out Mountain, and near Chattanooga in Tennessee. 

During this month Judge John H. Weiss, who had long 
presided over the common pleas of Dauphin County, died. 
At once there was a scramble and the Bar of the county 

403 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

divided pretty evenly with very much bitterness of feeling. 
The political forces urged me to appoint S. J. McCarroll, 
who was counsel for the Dairy and Food Bureau, and about 
half the bar gathered to his support. The other half 
vindictively objected. To have gratified either side, after 
the contest grew warm, would have raised a storm. As 
it happened a year or two before there had been a vacancy 
in the Superior Court and every member of the Dauphin 
County bar had signed a petition to me to appoint a neigh- 
bor, Thomas H. Capp of Lebanon. I did not appoint him, 
but I had kept the petition. One evening Olmsted came to 
the executive mansion to urge the appointment of McCarroll. 
After he had talked to me for half an hour, I said to him : 
''Olmsted, I cannot appoint McCarroll," and I gave him 
reasons. He was disappointed. Then I said to him: 
''How would Capp do?" He was astonished, but I knew 
that Capp and he were close personal, professional and 
political friends. A twinkle came into his eye and he 
departed. To the surprise of everybody, I appointed Capp 
from outside the county, but the joke of it was that not a 
member of the Bar could object for the reason that he knew 
he had endorsed Capp for the higher court. And the dove 
of peace folded its wings in absolute silence 



404 



CHAPTER XIII 
Governor, 1906 

THE approach of the new year led many newspapers 
to request the expression of some thought upon its 
advent. I complied with one such request in this 
way: 

"Let us arise upon new year's morning with the deter- 
mination that throughout the year we will do more to develop 
our own latent virtues and less in the way of criticism of 
the defects of other people. Let us resolve to do honest 
work, to proclaim it seldom, and to see as much good in 
others as possible." 

These suggestions were not altogether satisfactory 
because of the sting in the tail, and they led to the writing 
of more editorials. 

One of the really able men in the state was David T. 
Watson, a Democratic lawyer in Pittsburgh. He was a 
man of fine literary skill and attainment and, like Hensel of 
Lancaster, was an illustration of my theory, opposed to that 
generally inculcated among lawyers, that a lawyer is strong 
professionally in proportion to the width of the field he 
covers. In other words, the power to think accurately is of 
more importance than technical information. It is what is 
digested and not what is taken into the mind and stomach 
that nourishes. Serious mental effort in various directions 
strengthens the faculty and makes a lawyer the better able 
to grasp legal problems. Watson came to see me concerning 
that part of my call for an extra session which related to 
Greater Pittsburgh and suggested a broadening of the 
language so as to have it include intervening territory. We 
lunched together at the executive mansion and talked the 
matter over. I had concluded to add civil service reform 

405 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

to the call as I had made it, and, acting on the principle of 
firing shot instead of a single ball, I accepted his suggestion. 
On the 9th of January I issued a supplemental call, and it 
may be added that upon contest the method adopted met the 
approval of the Supreme Court. This call included these 
subjects: 

First. — To revise the laws relative to primary elections 
in such a way as to provide for the holding of the primary 
elections of all political parties within the commonwealth 
on the same day, at the same time, under the supervision of 
properly constituted officers, and to make such change in 
or additions to these laws as may seem advisable. 

Second. — To establish a civil service system by means 
of which the routine offices and employments of the common- 
wealth may be filled by appointments made after ascertain- 
ment of qualifications and fitness, and the incumbents of 
such ofiices may retain them during good behavior. 

Third. — To designate the uses to which moneys may be 
applied by candidates, political managers and conamittees 
in political campaigns, both for nominations and elections, 
and to require the managing committees and managers of 
all political parties to file with some designated official, 
at the close of each campaign, a detailed statement in 
writing accompanied by affidavit of the amounts collected 
and the purposes for which they were expended. 

Fourth. — To enable cities that are now or may here- 
after be contiguous or in close proximity, including any 
intervening land, to be united in one municipality in order 
that the people may avoid the unnecessary burdens of main- 
taining separate municipal governments. This fourth sub- 
ject is a modification of the first subject in the original call 
and is added in order that legislation may be enabled 
under either of them as may be deemed wise. 

The third subject, a Corrupt Practices Act, was included 
at the suggestion of Judge Sulzberger, who wrote to me 
calhng attention to the provisions of the English act. 
406 



GOVERNOR, 1906 

For a week or two the personal comment was quite 
delightful for the reason that these improvements in public 
life might lessen the power of the political opponents of 
the critics, and the approval lasted until I undertook to 
correct some wrong in the continuance of which they were 
interested. A poet wrote in the Pittsburgh Leader: 

Now blessings on 

The man who so 
Thinks up reforms 

And makes them go; 
He has his faults, 

And who will say 
That these his merits 

Should outweigh? 
Not so. At heart 

The man is white. 
Hail! Pennypacker! 

You're all right!" 

On the 3d of January I participated in the memorial 
meeting of the bar held in the Court of Common Pleas No. 2 
and presided over by Chief Justice Mitchell, upon the death 
of Judge J. I. Clark Hare. Chief Justice Mitchell, John 
Samuel, Samuel Dickson, Judge Mayer Sulzberger, Richard 
L. Ashhurst, George Tucker Bispham, Wilham Righter 
Fisher, Henry R. Hatfield, William H. Staake and I made 
addresses. Ashhurst, a stout man, a gentleman of refine- 
ment and culture, who had had a military record at Gettys- 
burg, who had been counsel for great railroad corporations, 
and later was postmaster in Philadelphia, leaving his cane 
behind him, upon an ocean pier at Atlantic City, disappeared 
in the ocean January 30, 1911, and was heard of no more. 

In the message to the legislature I said: 

Since its adjournment a wave of popular and political unrest 
and commotion has spread over the land and left its impress in 
our own commonwealth as well as elsewhere. Such upheavals, 
to whatever causes they may be due, are to be regarded not as 

407 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

disasters but as opportunities. It is at such times that much may 
be accomplished by wise legislators to enhance the public weal. 
The unfortunate failure of the Greater Pittsburgh legislation 
through the finding of the Supreme Court that the act was uncon- 
stitutional, and the failure of a bank, incorporated and super- 
vised by the national government, holding at the time a large 
amount of State funds, have given the legal occasion for the call- 
ing of the legislature together in extraordinary session under 
Article IV, Section 12, of the constitution. I have besides been 
unwilling that the present popular disturbances should subside 
without securing more permanent results than the substitution 
of one contractor for another, the removal of incumbents from 
office, the overthrow of one political party or faction and the ele- 
vation of their opponents, and the suppression of one private 
ambition in order that another may be fostered and gratified. , . . 
The opportunity to help the commonwealth in these respects has 
come to you rather than to your predecessors or successors. The 
responsibility rests with you. 

With respect to apportionment, I presented to the 
legislature this view: 

The time has come when a reapportionment of the state into 
senatorial and representative districts in compliance with the 
command of the constitution must be made. It is enough to say 
that you are required by the fundamental law, your oaths of 
office and your consciences to make this reapportionment, but, 
were anything more needed, it is manifest that the present division 
of the state is a misfit which grows into greater disproportion with 
each day and is fraught with great injustice. Some men are 
deprived of their right and others are loaded with what does not 
belong to them. The difficulties in the way must be overcome. 
It is unnecessary to repeat here what was fully presented in my 
last message, to which you are referred, but the constitution itself 
offers almost insuperable obstacles and cannot in all of its details 
of method be followed. It must, therefore, yield in what is of 
least importance to such an extent as to permit an apportionment 
to be made. In construing the instrument we must draw a dis- 
tinction between the mandate to divide the state into districts, 
which is absolute and must be obeyed, and the method provided 
which is directory only and is not of the same fundamental impor- 
tance. This method ought to be followed as closely as possible, 

408 



GOVERNOR, 1906 

but, where the result cannot otherwise be secured, must be set 
aside. By dividing the lines of a few of the counties, a fairly 
equitable apportionment may be made and one in accord with 
all of the other requirements. 

I submitted to the legislature a plan working out fair 
results by dividing one of the counties, as a tentative 
suggestion. Again the western poet broke into verse: 

A message from the Schwenksville sage, 
Give ear, the groundlings all, give ear. 

While from the broad typewritten page 
The clerk, in accents loud and clear, 

Declaims the sentiments profound 

That Penny packer passes round. 

No ordinary screed is this 

But one that cannot fail to strike 
The mind with awe. Say, who would miss 

That verbiage so statesmanlike, 
That flow of golden rhetoric 
Whereof P. P. well knows the trick. 

Of course 'tis not, hke Holy Writ, 

All true. For instance, there's the claim 

That those who make our laws are fit 
And never play a crooked game. 

The legislature. Penny vows, 

Is honest. Here — nix komm herause. 

He says that when the boys last sat 

In legislative conclave, they 
Ne'er dreamed of graft and pickings fat. 

Nor gave the people's rights away. 
This thing let's take not as pretense 
But in a mere Pickwickian sense. 

And having said that all is straight, 

Behold in stentor tones he calls 
Upon the boys to renovate 

Their record. Thus he overhauls 
Reprovingly the self-same crowd 
Whereof he swears that he is proud. 

409 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

But plain it is that Penny knows 

What bitter ire the people feel 
Against the authors of its woes, 

The wreckers of the commonweal. 
Hence, while he pats them on the back 
He bids them take another tack. 

Reforms upon reforms he piles. 

"All these," quoth he, "ye must provide 
If ye would win the people's smiles. 

And from the dread toboggan slide 
Your party save, which else no doubt 
Will wither up and peter out." 

Thus runs the message, curious hash 

Of reason and of rabid rant, 
It may ward off the threatened crash 

And will, if what the voters want 
Is granted. Meanwhile, anyhow, 
To Schwenksville's sage we all must bow. 

During this month a man named Michael Carrazola, a 
wealthy Italian, was murdered and, the crime being attri- 
buted to a "Black Hand" anarchistic organization in Wash- 
ington County, the pohce made search and found a lot of 
correspondence showing a plot to remove a number of 
prominent people over the country, including myself One 
of the New York magazines published an article upon the 
subject. One of the annoyances to which men in conspicu- 
ous station are subjected, especially when newspapers are 
interested in creating antagonisms, is the great number of 
cranks of one kind or other who continually pursue them. 
James Auter, the colored barber who had long been door- 
keeper in the executive department, was always on the 
watch for these people. Through my term there was 
scarcely a week in which threatening letters were not 
received. Every once in a while came a suspicious package 
which James dumped into a bucket of water and then took 
apart. Among them were many curious devices. 
410 



GOVERNOR, 1906 

The main reason for objection to the special session 
on the part of the Republican politicians was the fear that 
the Democrats would make use of the occasion to secure 
pohtical capital. Their anticipations proved to be entirely 
correct. Resolutions were offered requesting the governor 
to add to his call all sorts of subjects, some of them quite 
absurd and all of them artful. Among them was one per- 
mitting trolley roads to carry freight, and another fixing a 
maximum of two cents a mile as a charge for the 
transportation of passengers. 

The Republicans did not dare to vote against any of 
these resolutions for the reason that, if they had done so, 
it would have been proclaimed that the party was opposed to 
the policy. They were, therefore, all passed and sent to 
me to be managed. A joint committee of the senate and 
house came over to the executive department to ascertain 
the result and received this answer: 

''When the wagon is full of corn it is better to unload 
into the crib before taking on any more. Come to me with 
suggestions as to further legislation during the special 
session, after there has been a disposition made of those 
now before the legislature. For the present it does not 
appear to me to be wise to add to them, even though 
important matters may have been omitted." 

The chairman of the committee reported that he had 
"one of the quaintest documents that ever originated in a 
coordinate branch of the government." They all under- 
stood the situation perfectly and when he read it there was 
a shout. That wagon load of corn traveled all over the 
state in editorial and cartoon, and there was no further 
trouble. Under no possible circumstances would I have 
favored either trolley freight or the fixing arbitrarily of a 
two-cents-a-mile fare. Nothing illustrates more forcibly the 
heedlessness and thoughtlessness of the masses than giving 
to trolley companies the right to carry freight as was done a 
short time thereafter. The railroads bought their rights of 

411 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

way and soon found it more profitable to carry freight 
than passengers. Then trolleys were given, free of expense, 
the right to use the highways in order that men, women and 
children might be transported. When they begin to carry 
freight the same old situation will return except that they 
occupy the highways. For twenty-five years, at enormous 
expense, we have been endeavoring to escape from grade 
crossings and in this way we create anew ten times as many as 
we ehminate. A fixing of fares ought only to be attempted 
after the most careful investigation. 

Practically all of my recommendations were accepted 
and enacted, including Greater Pittsburgh, reapportion- 
ment and the corrupt practices act. For only trying to 
bring about some of this legislation in New York, Charles E. 
Hughes was made a justice of the Supreme Court of the 
United States, which shows how sometimes exploitation is 
more effective than achievement. I have already quoted 
Roosevelt's reply to Knox when the latter advised that 
professional man of courage to appoint me to the Supreme 
Bench. About the special session he, however, said: "It is 
surely not too much to say that this body of substantive 
legislation marks an epoch in the history of the practical 
betterment of political conditions, not merely for your state 
but for all our states." 

The legislature itself passed this resolution, the signed 
original of which now hangs in my library: 



In the Senate, 

February 14, 1906. 
Resolved (if the House of Representatives concur), That the 
thanks and congratulations of the legislature be extended to 
Samuel W. Pennypacker, Governor of Pennsylvania, for his 
patriotic action in calling the legislature together in extraordinary 
session for the purpose of enacting important and necessary legis- 
lation. The wisdom of his course is best evidenced in the una- 
nimity of the sentiment of the citizens of the commonwealth gen- 
erally so expressed by the favorable action of their representatives 
412 



GOVERNOR, 1906 

in both branches of the legislature in the passage of substan- 
tially all the bUls indicated in his proclamations. 

Frank A. Judd, 

Chief Clerk of the Senate. 
The foregoing resolution concurred in February 15, 1906. 

Thomas H. Garvin, 
Chief Clerk of the House of Representatives. 

The lark of the west, Burgoyne of Pittsburgh, sang a 
song of jubilee: 

Greater Pittsburgh 

(From the Pittsburgh Leader, February 8, 1906.) 

Sing out, ye mighty bands of brass. 
Let drums and trumpets blithely sound 

A strain of praise ! Let glass with glass 
Be clinked ! Aye, and for miles around 

Let all true men like joy display! 

The Greater Town comes now to stay. 

Yes, after all the weary years 

Of battling; after all the jars 
Sustained by gallant pioneers 

Of progress, they've let down the bars 
At last and given us a show 
All rival cities to outgrow. 

Old Allegheny, which is sunk 

In torpor, now must needs awake. 
No more can she hang back and flunk 

And odious ease and leisure take. 
She's part of us henceforth and must 
Play ball and raise her share of dust. 

Our mayor will henceforth exercise 

A broad and mighty rulership. 
A giant town he'll supervise; 

A town that's destined to outstrip 
Its peers whenever he controls 
A solid half a million souls. 

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

And we shall spread. No pow'r can stop 

The movement that is under way 
To land old Pittsburgh right on top. 

No pow'r on earth can e'er gainsay 
Our fitness thus to rise and shine 
And 'mid the first hang out our sign. 

For we have riches, we have force, 

And brains and enterprise and grit. 
And once there's naught to block our course 

We'll surely make a bigger hit 
Than here or on a foreign shore 
A town has ever made before. 

Your hand, Sam. Pennypacker, you 

Have been to us a friend in need. 
Our plans seemed destined to fall through 

When to the front you came to plead 
Our cause. The legislature heard, 
And to its inmost heart was stirr'd. 

Hence comes that great, that priceless boon. 

The famous Greater Pittsburgh bill, 
Which means our exaltation soon. 

Which means that we shall soon fulfil 
Our destiny in royal style, 
And be the topmost of the pile. 

Sing out, then, ye brazen bands! 

Ye drums and trumpets rend the air! 
The message send throughout all lands 

That Greater Pittsburgh is all there. 
And will be yet — so please the fates — 
King bee in these United States. 

Whoop! 

Even John H. Few, a member of the house, could not 
resist the impulse to write some verse. Fow was a char- 
acter quite unusual. The son of a German butcher, born 
in Kensington, and much in the rough, he read law. Because 
of his huge voice he held the soubriquet of "Fog Horn" Fow. 
414 



GOVERNOR, 1906 

Short and fat, when he spoke he shook all over. When he 
argued he began in the middle of the proposition and worked 
both ways at once with the most intense energy. Yet, 
worthy and assiduous, he won respect and, what is more 
remarkable, reputation as a constitutional lawyer. 

The Pittsburgh Gazette said, editorially, February 16th: 

"Pennsylvania has had no better governor," and the 
next day the Philadelphia Inquirer followed suit with: 

"The biggest man in Pennsylvania today is Samuel W. 
Pennypacker, Governor, " and " Pennypacker's name will go 
into history as one of the greatest of governors." 

An act had been passed at the session of 1905 providing 
for a commission of three lawyers to codify the divorce 
laws of the state, and authorizing the governor "to com- 
municate in the name of the commonwealth with the 
governors of the several states comprising the Federal Union, 
requesting them to co-operate in the assembling of a con- 
gress of delegates from such of the states as take favorable 
action upon the suggestion; said congress to meet at 
Washington in the District of Columbia, at such a time in 
the near future as shall be agreeable for the purpose of 
examining, considering and discussing the laws and decisions 
of the several states upon the subject of divorce, with a view 
to the adoption of a draft for the proposed general law 
which shall be reported to the governors of all the states for 
submission to the legislatures thereof, with the object of 
securing, as nearly as may be possible, uniform statutes 
upon the matter of divorce throughout the nation." Ten 
thousand dollars were appropriated with which to pay the 
expenses. It was the first and only serious effort, up to this 
time made, to correct one of the greatest and growing evils 
of our modern life. The commissioners appointed were: 
C. La Rue Munson, of Williamsport, an eminent lawyer, 
later suggested for the governorship; William H. Staake, 
of Philadelphia, whom I appointed a judge of the court of 
common pleas, and Walter George Smith, of Philadelphia, 

415 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

who was one of the trustees of the University of Pennsyl- 
vania. The movement attracted the widest attention and 
met with universal commendation. The convention met in 
Washington, February 19th, and every state in the Union 
was fully represented except South Carolina, whose laws 
permit no divorce. She, too, was heard upon the floor in 
the proceedings. The sessions were opened with prayers by 
Edward Everett Hale of Massachusetts and Bishop William 
C. Doane of New York. The convention elected me its 
president. Among the delegates were some of the most 
distinguished men in professional life in the United States. 
Among the clergy were Archbishop John J. Glennon of St. 
Louis, Bishop T. F. Gailor of Tennessee, Bishop Doane of 
New York, Dr. Charles A. Dickey of the Presbyterian 
Church, Bishop John Shanley and Dr. Washington Gladden. 
Among the statesmen were United States Senators Smoot 
and Sutherland of Utah and Clark of Arkansas and Oscar 
E. Underwood of Alabama, later a national figure and 
Democratic leader of the house. Among the lawyers were 
Charles W. Miller, attorney general of Indiana; I. F. 
Ailshie of the Superior Court of Idaho; Judge Charles 
Monroe of Los Angeles, California; Robert H. Richards, 
attorney general of Delaware, and the vice-chancellor, John 
K. Emory, of New Jersey, an exceedingly clear-headed, able 
man. Governor Lea of Delaware took part and there were 
three or four women delegates. It was in every sense a 
truly representative American assemblage. The questions 
arising were discussed with learning and gravity and the 
result of the deliberations was the agreement upon a care- 
fully drawn statute to be presented to all of the legislatures 
of the states with a recommendation that it be adopted in 
lieu of existing legislation. It was enacted by New Jersey, 
Delaware and some of the other states, but unfortunately 
it could not be presented to the legislature of Pennsylvania 
until after the force which had been behind the measure had 
disappeared from Harrisburg. M. Hampton Todd, the 
416 



GOVERNOR, 1906 

attorney general of my successor, was opposed to the 
passage of the act, declared that there was no such thing as 
a divorce evil, and nothing further was done in the state 
where the movement originated. Others lost heart and thus 
Pennsylvania lost the opportunity of leading to success a 
great moral and material advance in social conditions. 
Nevertheless the discussions of the congress had a good 
effect and were not without result. 

On the 14th of March, after a dinner with Penrose and 
Olmsted at the Willard Hotel, the Pennsylvania Club of 
Washington held a reception in my honor, intended to be a 
significant affair, attended by a great throng which included 
the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, Cannon, and a 
number of senators, and members of the cabinet. Two days 
later followed an entertainment at the Zembie Temple in 
Harrisburg by the Imperial Potentates of the Mystic Shrine, 
generally called, in order to escape the prolonged magnifi- 
cence, "Shriners." I made an address to them and the 
event made an impression on me for two reasons: Among 
those participating was Admiral W. S. Schley, who attained 
too much distinction and was the subject of much contro- 
versy in the Spanish-American War. Upon a number of 
occasions I had met also Admiral Sampson. Unfortunately 
for the latter, he had taken himself and his battleship away 
at the time the Spanish fleet came out of the harbor, and 
Schley was left to conduct the fight. No amount of arguing 
can escape the consequences of these underlying facts. 
The great misfortunes which come to men in life, and 
surely this was woeful, can generally be traced to 
some failure of conduct due to temperamental defects. 
Sampson did not need to take away his battleship. 
Schley, beside whom I sat at dinner and with whom 
I had the opportunity to chat, appeared to be a plain 
and substantial person. The other fact that made an 
impression was to see Bishop Darlington of the Episcopal 
Church, at the head of the Diocese of Harrisburg, 
27 417 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

crowned with a red fez and taking an active part in the 
solemn flummery. 

On the 20th, accompanied by my staff, by Mrs. Penny- 
packer and my sister-in-law, Mrs. James L. Pennypacker, I 
started for Vicksburg, Mississippi, to dedicate the monument 
erected to commemorate the services of the Pennsylvania 
soldiers who took part in that campaign. It is a fact of 
which Pennsylvanians ought to be proud, and which has a 
significance, that this state was represented not only in all 
of the battles of the East, but likewise in those of the West. 
No other eastern state of the North had any part in Shiloh. 
We reached Vicksburg on the morning of the 23d and were 
received with a salute of seventeen guns. General Stephen 
D. Lee, who had been a lieutenant general in the rebel 
army, a sensible, kindly and agreeable gentleman, had 
charge of the local arrangements and gave us much attention. 
We rode through the National Park and were taken in 
steamboats upon the Mississippi River to Grant's "Cut-Off," 
where it was attempted to divert the channel of the river 
as a war measure. The black alluvial soil along the river is 
seventy or eighty feet in depth and suggests agricultural 
richness. Nobody appeared to be at work, however, except 
the negroes and the mules, and it looked to me like a country 
which would perish were it not for them. In the evening 
there were a reception and a dance at the Carroll Hotel, 
where my colonels and the pretty Southern girls had a 
good time. The ceremonies occurred on the following day. 
General James A. Beaver, a soldier who lost his leg, later a 
governor and judge of the Superior Court, delivered the 
address. Vardaman, a long-haired, black-eyed, noisy 
swashbuckler, was then the governor of Mississippi. He 
made a speech which sounded like a repetition of some Fourth 
of July oration he had at some time committed to memory. 
Later he was sent to the United States Senate. I accepted 
the monument and gave it into the custody of the nation. 
In the evening the veterans of the Union and Rebel armies 
418 



GOVERNOR, 1906 

assembled in the Vicksburg Opera House and Lee and I 
made addresses. Among those who were on the progranmie 
was Jack Crawford, the Texas scout, a ghb man with some 
oratorical and literary ability, whose hair hung down on his 
shoulders, and who has become a stock figure in soldier 
demonstrations throughout the country. He haunted the 
steps of Mrs. James L. Pennypacker and wrote a poem in 
her honor which he sent to her. We returned home by way 
of Chattanooga. 

One day, on going to the hotel in Vicksburg, I was told 
that a couple of ladies had been waiting for several hours to 
see me. This was their story: They had been informed 
that I was a friend of Senator Quay and therefore they had 
come from an inland town in Mississippi to shake my hand 
only to show their appreciation of him. When he was a 
penniless young man he had drifted to the South and their 
father had shown him some favor and rendered him some 
assistance. Years rolled by and their father went into the 
rebel army and was killed and the family were left in distress. 
They appealed to Quay. After the election of Mr. McKinley 
Quay went to him and said: 

**Mr. President, there is one thing I would like to have." 

"What is it?" said the President. 

"I want to name the postmaster in the town of Meridian, 
in Mississippi." 

"You shall have it," said the President, glad to get off 
with a favor of so little consequence. But trouble arose, the 
politicians in that state had made another disposition of 
the office, and the President sent for Quay and said to 
him: 

"I am sorry, but the situation is such that I can not give 
you that postoffice at Meridian." 

"Very well," said Quay quietly, "but be good enough 
to remember how many votes Pennsylvania has in the next 
national convention, and how few has Mississippi." 

The widow of the old rebel soldier was appointed post- 
419 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

mistress of Meridian and held the office as long as Quay 
lived. The women were tearful and we had a long talk. 

Then came the inevitable coal strike, of which Roose- 
velt told me that he had information and which as he 
indicated he had planned to come into Pennsylvania and 
manage as he had done during the administration of Gov- 
ernor Stone. At once, without consultation with him or 
anybody else, I wrote this letter to George F. Baer, the 
president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company, 
and to John Mitchell of Indianapolis, the head of the labor 
organization which had control of the strike: 

March 31, 1906. 
Dear Sir: 

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania expects that every rea- 
sonable effort will be made by the parties interested to accom- 
modate the differences between coal operators and coal miners 
and to avert the strike which is now threatened. 

Yours very truly, 

Samuel W. Penny packer. 

This was simply intended as notice to both of them that 
the interests of the commonwealth were to be considered 
and that she did not propose to sit idly by and permit them 
to involve her in difficulty. They were holding conferences, 
each side resolute, and in the meantime the anthracite 
region lay idle. Coal is a public necessity, and to deprive 
the people of it was to inflict great suffering. The New York 
Sun read the letter correctly. In an editorial, April 6th, it 
said: ''Between the lines of this timely message we think 
an intimation can be read that the present governor of 
Pennsylvania will be prepared to employ the last resource of 
his authority to keep the peace and preserve to all men 
their rights. 

On the 12th I sent forth this announcement: 

I announce to the people of Pennsylvania that the deposit of 
$1,030,000 in the Enterprise National Bank, a national bank 
which failed on the 18th day of October, 1905, together with 

420 



GOVERNOR, 1906 

interest, $14,343.15, has been paid into the treasury of the com- 
monwealth, and in your behalf I thank the state treasurer 
(Mathues) for the care with which this deposit, when made, was 
safeguarded and for the promptness with which it has been 
collected. 

I likewise announce that on the 3d of April, 1906, there was 
paid into the treasury $236,762.65, collected from the United 
States Government for moneys loaned to it by this common- 
wealth in the War of 1812. 



It is a psychological phenomenon. For the purposes 
of a political campaign, by suggestion that possibly the 
money might be lost, the people could be worked up into a 
frenzy and persuaded to put an incapable like Berry in 
charge of their finances. The proof that it was safe in the 
treasury was treated with absolute indifference. The 
fact that moneys due for a century had been finally col- 
lected attracted no attention whatever and no journal 
thought it worth its while to say a word of appreciation. 
Still trying to make the most of the situation, the 
Record said: ^'Political pull secured for the Enterprise 
Bank heavy deposits of state money which served 
to give it the appearance of stability and lured the 
credulous people of Allegheny to intrust it with their 
private savings." 

On the 17th began in Philadelphia the celebration by 
the American Philosophical Society, the oldest scientific 
organization in the United States, and the University of 
Pennsylvania, of the two hundreth anniversary of the birth 
of Benjamin Franklin. Many men of distinction in science 
and others conspicuous in the various walks of life, came 
from over the world to attend. Among them were Hugo de 
Vries of Amsterdam ; Sir George H. Darwin, son of Charles 
Darwin; Alois Brandl of Berlin; Gughelmo Marconi, the 
inventor of wireless telegraphy; and Andrew Carnegie, 
There was a dinner at the Bellevue-Stratford at which I 
made a speech. On my left sat Henry Cabot Lodge, of 

421 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Massachusetts, cultivated and sincere, and next to him 
Elihu Root of New York, stronger, but less reliable. 

Dr. I. Minis Hays, the energetic secretary of the Ameri- 
can Philosophical Society, was most responsible for the 
success of the demonstration. 

The affairs of the coal strike grew more heated, and 
May 2d I issued this proclamation : 

Whereas industrial disturbances have recently arisen in vari- 
ous parts of the commonwealth, accompanied by manifestations 
of violence and disorder, now, therefore, I, Samuel Whitaker 
Pennypacker, Governor of Pennsylvania, do issue this my procla- 
mation and call upon all citizens by their conduct, example and 
utterances, whether printed or verbal, to assist in the mainte- 
nance of the law. Times of commotion furnish the test of the 
capacity of the people for self-government. Every man is entitled 
to labor and get for his labor the highest compensation he can 
lawfully secure. There is no law to compel him to labor unless 
he so chooses, and he may cease to labor whenever he considers 
it to be to his interest so to cease. The laboring man, out of 
whose efforts wealth arises, has the sympathy of all disinter- 
ested people in his lawful struggles to secure a larger proportion 
of the profit which results from his labor. What he earns belongs 
to him, and if he invests his earnings the law protects his prop- 
erty just as the rights of property of all men must be protected. 
He has no right to interfere with another man who may want to 
labor. Violence has no place among us and will not be tolerated. 

Let all men in quiet and soberness keep the peace and attend 
to their affairs with the knowledge that it is the purpose of the 
commonwealth to see that the principles herein outhned are 
enforced. 

This proclamation drew the lines exactly where they 
ought to be placed and expressed with precision the purpose 
which it was intended should be carried into effect. There 
had been an impression entertained even by many good 
lawyers, and widely entertained, that the governor could 
not interfere until called upon by the sheriff of the county. 
This theory would overthrow completely the constitutional 
power of the governor to see that the laws are enforced 
422 



GOVERNOR, 1906 

and would make the sheriff master of the situation. I 
let it be known that, while I recognized the pro- 
priety of consulting with the sheriff and letting him 
maintain the peace if he could, I would not listen for 
a moment to the claim of want of power in the governor 
and, if the occasion required such action, would wait for no 
sheriff. 

On the 4th the New York Sun had a long leading editorial 
entitled: *'No Presidential Intervention this Time," saying 
that the union leaders were "trying to dragoon the most 
exalted personage in the nation into a wrangle with which 
he has no official connection whatever," that there was a 
definite report throughout the anthracite region that the 
President "has determined to take part today or 
tomorrow," but that Northeastern Pennsylvania was 
quiet; "thanks to Governor Pennypacker's unyielding 
insistence, that law and order must be maintained." Know- 
ing what the President had said to me at an earlier date, I 
have no doubt that this statement was correct and that he 
was waiting to jump in at the first opportunity. There 
was rioting at Mount Carmel and the mob took possession 
of the town. The constabulary were sent there and the 
mob defied them. Then they rode through the town. The 
mob assailed them and they shot about eighty men, estab- 
lishing a reputation which has gone all over the country 
and has been retained in many trying occasions since, with 
the result that the labor difficulties in the anthracite coal 
region entirely disappeared. It was in every way a most 
wholesome lesson. The rights of labor and the general 
sympathy for the man who produces the wealth of the world 
had been asserted, the authority of the state had been 
maintained and violent opposition to the law overcome, 
and the aggression of the national government, dan- 
gerous to both state and nation, had been successfully 
resisted. There was almost universal commendation over 
the country. 

423 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Reading Terminal, Philadelphia, 

7th May, 1906. 
My dear Governor Pennypacker: 

When I was pressed by the New York interests to urge the 
Governor of Pennsylvania to take a decided stand for law and 
order, I told them that I knew the Governor of Pennsylvania; 
that he would perform his duty without suggestions from any one; 
that no person in the commonwealth better understood what was 
his duty; and that he had the character and the courage to per- 
form it. I have received a number of telegrams congratulating 
the commonwealth on the stand taken by you; and I only want 
to say to you now that your action was a most potential factor in 
bringing about a solution of the problem. 

Yours very truly, 

Geo. F. Baer. 



May 9, 1906. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 
Executive Chamber, 

Harrisburg, Penna. 
Dear Governor: 

I have yours of the 8th instant and extend to you my sincere 
congratulations on the firm way in which you handled the strike 
proposition. The effect of your proclamation was excellent and 
it was most timely. The result, of course, has a most important 
bearing on the election. 

Yours sincerely, 

Boies Penrose. 

To the general approval there was some exception. I 
am quite sure the result and the manner in which it was 
accomplished were not pleasing to Roosevelt. Collier's 
Weekly, a sheet published in New York, took advantage of 
the opportunity, May 19th, to produce a poem. It had 
recently taken to its editorial bosom the young Irishman, 
Mark Sullivan, who, claiming to be a Pennsylvanian, had a 
few years before written the anonymous and slanderous 
article on the state for the Atlantic Monthly. Perhaps the 
poem had a like inspiration. 
424 



GOVERNOR, 1906 

Who's Zoo in America 
Governor Samuel Whangdoodle Pennypacker 

Like Noah Webster, he reclines 

Within his easy chair, 
A-tapping wisdom's sacred mines 

And calling here and there, 
Yet all he finds of perfect minds 

Up to the present day- 
Are Moses, Plato, Socrates, 

Himself and Matthew Quay. 

He's written over fifty books 

And some are nearly good — 
On railroad jobs, successful snobs 

And human brotherhood; 
And he can speak in French and Greek 

On topics of the day, 
Like Moses, Plato, Socrates, 

Himself and Matthew Quay 

Oh! Philadelphia's Sabbath calm 

Sits on his holiness 
UntU by chance his eyeballs glance 

Across the daily press — 
Then pale before his grumblous roar 

Reporters flee away, 
Who took in vain by words profane 

The name of him and Quay. 

Yet soft he roareth since the hour 

When good Saint Graft was hurled 
By anger quick upon the kick 

That echoed round the world 
And cautiously he goes by night, 

And cautiously by day, 
For fear some ripe tomato might 

Be aimed at him or Quay. 

But when again the Heavens smile 

And public wrath is spent. 
When Philadelphia sleeps awhile, 

Corrupted but content; 

425 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Then sadly Pennypacker comes 

Forth to the graveyard gray, 
And lays a grateful wreath of plums 

Upon the tomb of Quay. 

"O Master," 'twixt his sobs he saith, 

"When all cartoonists die, 
When editors, all gagged to death, 

'Neath broken presses lie. 
Four noble statues I'll erect 

With public funds to pay; 
The Gilded Hog, the Yellow Dog, 

Myself and Matthew Quay." 

A picture equal in merit to the poem accompanied it. 

For the 29th of May, a prize fight, under the guise of 
a boxing bout, between ''Bob" Fitzsimmons, the champion, 
and "Tommy" Burns, had been scheduled at a sporting 
club at North Essington in Delaware County. The fisticuff 
fraternity in New York, who feared to run the risk of prosecu- 
tion under the laws of that state, had arranged to have the 
bout in the Quaker County of Delaware, just outside of 
Philadelphia, where, as they convinced themselves, it would 
be within easy reach and safe. They had the support of 
the sporting editors of the Philadelphia journals, and the 
scheme was lauded rather than opposed. A special train 
was engaged to bring over the New York " fancy " and tickets 
were so much in demand that they sold as high as fifty 
dollars each. McDade, the conscientious young district 
attorney of Delaware County, did what he could to prevent 
the occurrence, but he found that the sheriff was in league 
with the rounders and the forces were too strong for him. 
Then he came to Harrisburg to see me. I tried in every 
way to get into communication with the sheriff, but he, 
too, had the impression that I was helpless to act, except 
through his intervention, and he went into hiding and 
escaped all directions. Then I called Groome to the depart- 
ment and said to him: 
426 



GOVERNOR, 1906 

"Groome, send some of your constabulary down to 
Essington and stop that prize fight." 

He replied: "Governor, I am rather personally in favor 
of the fight, but if you order me to stop it, I will see that it 
is done." 

The order was "stop it." 

Groome sent some of his men down there and while 
there was a great commotion and much swearing, the 
fight did not occur. As was to be expected, the local paper, 
having an interest in common with the violators of the law, 
called me a czar and said that never before had any governor 
assumed to override the sheriff of the county. 

The Republican State Convention met June 7th and 
nominated Edwin S. Stuart for governor and Robert K. 
Murphy, an orator with much power of utterance, for 
lieutenant governor. Among the resolutions adopted was: 

We commend the well-balanced administration of Governor 
Samuel W. Pennypacker as capable, upright and business-like; 
exact in his attention to administration duties; punctual in the 
fulfilment of its duties; vigilant in vetoing pernicious legislation; 
fearless in its protection of the poor man's home against railway 
greed; wise in safeguarding the water supplies of the state; far- 
seeing in its improvement of the public highways; firm in the 
maintenance of peace and order; successful in the accomplish- 
ment of important, far-reaching and substantial reforms; watch- 
ful in the care of the interests of all the people of the common- 
wealth; patriotic, impartial, just and ruggedly honest. 

It happened just at this juncture that I again ran athwart 
the purposes of the RepubHcan organization. A vacancy 
had occurred in the position of the harbor master in Phila- 
delphia, caused by the resignation of Samuel G. Maloney, 
who had held it for years. Penrose asked me to appoint 
Oscar E. Noll, but having some information concerning 
the career of Noll which was not of a favorable character, 
I declined. Then he recommended to me a very reputable 
wool merchant. I was just about to give him the appoint- 

427 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

ment when I learned that he had made an agreement not 
to perform the duties in person but by deputies, among 
whom the salary was to be divided — one of whom was Noll. 
I did not propose to be played with after that fashion, and, 
sending for James Pollock, asked him to take the place. 
He accepted and made an excellent official, attending to 
his duties in a business-like manner. Pollock was a friend 
of mine, but he had a caustic tongue which he did not 
endeavor to restrain, but rather indulged, and he had said 
many things which had made him obnoxious to Penrose, 
McNichol and Durham. Possibly no selection could have 
been more unsatisfactory to them, and after the end of my 
term they disposed of him by having an act passed to abohsh 
the office. 

On the 8th of June I made an address at Bellefonte, at 
the dedication of the monument to Andrew G. Curtin; 
and on the 17th presided over the jubilee in Musical 
Fund Hall in Philadelphia, where, fifty years before, the 
Republican party held its first convention to nominate 
a candidate for the presidency. A number of men who 
voted for Fremont and Dayton were present, and Alexander 
K. McClure made a reminiscent address. J. Hampton 
Moore, a small, slim, intelligent and alert man, who had 
worked on a newspaper and graduated to a seat in congress, 
later introduced me as " our good governor." I said: 

We are met together to-day to celebrate the fiftieth anni- 
versary of the organization of the Republican party, and we hold 
ourselves fortunate in having the presence of the survivors of those 
who participated in its earliest convention and of so many of its 
representatives who are honored by and lend honor to high official 
station. Fittingly we meet within the limits of that common- 
wealth in which the party had its origin and which, while receiv- 
ing the least proportionate reward, has ever given to it the most 
continuous and effective support. Since the election of Abraham 
Lincoln in 1860, Pennsylvania has never cast an electoral vote 
against a candidate of the Republican party for the Presidency of 
the United States. The largest majority ever received by a 

428 



GOVERNOR, 1906 

presidential candidate in any state in America was given in 
Pennsylvania to a Republican, No other political organization in 
the history of the world achieved such important and varied 
results as has the Republican party in the last half century. 
Neither Guelph nor Ghibelline, Girondist nor Sans Culotte, Royal- 
ist nor Roundhead, Whig nor Tory exerted so powerful an influ- 
ence upon human affairs. It has broken the yokes from the necks 
of three millions of slaves. It has fought with equal success 
domestic insurrection and foreign aggression. It has so extended 
our possessions that the sun rises over the Philippines and sets 
beyond the Mississippi, still shining upon American soil. It has 
gathered into our embrace the fairest islands of the South Sea. 
But, more than all, it has brought forth men. Its first President 
ranks in diction with Jeremiah and Shakespeare, and in state- 
craft stands beside Alfred the Great and William of Orange, on a 
plane with the most exalted characters of all time. Its last Presi- 
dent, though it be too soon to form an adequate estimate of his 
acccomplishment, has made an impression beyond that of any 
other living statesman. Compare the presidents of the United 
States during the last fifty years with the emperors of Rome, or 
the kings of England or France throughout a like period of time, 
or if it be not ungracious, compare them with the presidents 
elected between 1800 and 1860, and see what a tale of excellence 
is unfolded. 

The past is secure, the present follows rapidly in its pathway, 
but what of the future? Every age has its own problems and upon 
their successful solution depends the fate of nations. To be 
swept away by the fitful currents of life which trouble every sea 
and cast up "mire and dirt" is for the nation, as for the indi- 
vidual, to perish. Go forward like Christian in the Pilgrim's 
Progress and the burdens of sin fall into the sloughs. Have faith 
and be of good cheer. Let us not forget that the province of the 
Republican party, the outcome of the highest wisdom has been to 
construct and to upbuild. Cleanliness and decency are among 
the latest of human acquisitions and American life has not yet 
reached its farthest stage of development. Many a gallant knight 
has fought behind a rusty shield and still has overcome his foe. 
If the Normans had been destroyed as marauders, what would 
have been the effect upon English civilization? 

Correct the evils which may have arisen in transportation, 
but do not forget that the system, as established, has created 
Chicago and St. Louis and has peopled the West. Cleanse 
wherever necessary, but preserve. Improve our products, but 

429 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

send them further around the world. See to it that labor secures 
a larger share of the profit, but recall that the annual inpour of 
people of every race and clime proves this to be the most attrac- 
tive and remunerative of all lands. If there be an occasional 
individual among us who is too rich, the policy of the Republican 
party which has given him his opportunity has likewise given 
solace and comfort to millions of prosperous people. Therefore, 
be ye steadfast, unmovable, and the golden jubilees of this great 
organization will grow in number as the centuries roll along, 
bringing in their course blessings and increase to the nation. 

Among those who were present and spoke were Robert 
K. Murphy and William Barnes, the latter of whom became 
so potent a factor in the politics of New York. I have no 
personal acquaintance \\dtli Mr. Barnes, but there are two 
Americans who have given their lives in the main to political 
activities whose utterances always give indications of the 
ability to think with accuracy and clearness. They are 
Barnes of Albany and Lane of Philadelphia. 

About this time I became associated with Alton B. 
Parker, who ran against Roosevelt for the presidency; 
Richard Olney, Mr. Cleveland's attorney general ; Nicholas 
Longworth, Roosevelt's son-in-law; Frederick B. Niedring- 
haus of St. Louis; General Benjamin F. Tracy; Thomas B. 
Wanamaker; George Gray of Delaware; and others, in an 
effort to change the management of the New York Life 
Insurance Company and the New York Mutual Life Insur- 
ance Company. Samuel Untermyer of New York was the 
underlying influence of the movement, and there were a 
number of meetings in his office. Like many such efforts, 
it did not succeed, and also, like many of them, it produced 
results. 

On the 26th of June I made an address at Fredericksburg, 
Virginia, at the dedication in the park there of the monu- 
ment to the One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Pennsylvania 
Regiment, which was commanded in that battle by my old 
colonel, William W. Jennings, and as it happened, it was the 
forty-third anniversary of our engagement at Gettysburg. 
430 



GOVERNOR, 1906 

Mrs. Jennings was among those present. I then had the 
opportunity to go over the battlefields of Fredericksburg 
and Chaneellorsville. 

On the 21st of June Governor E. C. Stokes of New Jersey 
and I delivered addresses at the dedication of the monument 
at Red Bank. A dreadfully hot day, a long ride amid 
shouting throngs over dusty country roads, and a crowded 
platform, covered with canvas just above our heads which 
shut out the air, were the incidents which marked the 
occasion. Stokes is a small man with a pronounced mous- 
tache, keen and alert and canny enough to keep his head 
above water in New Jersey politics. 

About this time I appointed the first board of regis- 
tration commissioners to register voters in Philadelphia, 
and selected George G. Pierie, Clinton Rogers Woodruff, J. 
Henry Scattergood and John Cadwalader, Jr. Pierie and 
Scattergood were acceptable to Penrose and the party 
managers. Cadwalader I appointed against the earnest 
protest of the leaders of both the Republican and Demo- 
cratic parties, because he was a gentleman who I knew would 
be fair, though narrow, and beyond influence, and partly 
because of my great regard for his father. I have found as a 
general thing that nice people have little sense of gratitude. 
They are apt to feel that they confer a favor by accepting 
what is given them. At the close of my administration 
Woodruff wrote a doubting sketch of me for the Yale 
Review. Some years later, over another matter, Cadwalader 
wrote a paper for the Public Ledger assailing my personal 
motives. I also saw a sketch of himself in print, evidently 
supervised by him, which said he had been retained in office 
by Governor Stuart and made no mention of the man who 
put him there having to override the political forces of both 
parties in order to do it. It was unmanly and disingenuous. 
He made a capable and useful official. 

This year, July 25th, the National Guard had their 
encampment at Gettysburg, where I again inspected, on 

431 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

foot, every man and took the review from a barouche. 
There was little comment on the method. 

In September came the effort to overthrow Penrose as 
the state leader, of which I had forewarned him and Dm*- 
ham two years before, and, much to my surprise, it came in 
the shape of an attack upon the capitol and the moneys 
expended in its erection and equipment, over which I had 
supposed everybody was happy. It is not my purpose 
here to do more than make a few general statements upon 
the subject. I made a thorough study of the whole matter 
in my Desecration and Profanation of the Pennsylvania 
State Capitol, published in 1911 and never answered, to 
which the reader is referred. Edwin S. Stuart had been 
nominated by the Republicans as their candidate for gov- 
ernor, and to comprehend the situation which resulted, it is 
absolutely necessary to have a measure of his character- 
istics. Forty years before, when he was an errand boy for 
Leary and I was a notary public, we had gone out into the 
country together to take the testimony of a witness, and 
we had known each other well ever since. Big, good- 
hearted, upright and kindly, his disposition was to be 
pleasing to everybody with whom he was brought into 
contact. His life-long training as a merchant was such as 
to lead him to give to everybody just what they wanted or 
thought they wanted. This disposition and this training 
united to make him entirely unfit for executive office, 
where the object ought always to be to advance the public 
welfare, with force, if need be, rather than to be agreeable 
to individuals, who often must be overruled. To expect 
him to resist public clamor would be to look for something 
of which he was utterly incapable. As governor, his main 
thought was to avoid responsibility and at the end of his 
term to escape unsinged. His administration was, there- 
fore, altogether colorlessi, without a single achievement 
which made any impression on the state and, therefore, he 
left office with the approval of everybody except those who 
432 



GOVERNOR, 1906 

had to do business with him. Yet even the latter liked 
"Ned Stuart." 

The Democrats and Independents nominated Lewis R. 
Emery, a rich oil man and wavering dilettante politician, 
an independent Republican, from the western end of the 
state. Then the floods were let loose and the capitol was 
used as the weapon in a desperate political struggle. The 
Republicans had intended to use it as a campaign argument, 
pointing to its wonderful success, the promptness with 
which it was completed, and its comparative inexpensive- 
ness. The other side, however, secured the claque with 
outcries over the moneys expended and, as usual, they had 
the support of the newspapers. With great ingenuity they 
added the cost of the furniture, metallic cases and general 
equipment to the cost of the building. The game would 
have been intensely interesting as a spectacle, had it not 
been fraught with tragedy to men who had given the best 
intelhgence to the construction of the building and who 
deserved well of their fellows, and had it not been for the 
injiu-y done to the repute of Pennsylvania for which the 
players cared not a whit. Still the assailants of the capitol 
did not play their game effectively. They made one great 
and fatal tactical blunder. Had they withheld the assault 
until within two or three weeks of the election Stuart would 
have been beaten and Penrose undone. By making it in 
September they gave time for correction and for the popular 
impression to become to some extent stale. The true policy 
of the Republican leaders would have been to have come 
manfully to the support of the capitol, but they were cowed 
by the clamor and they drifted in a rudderless boat. Stuart 
promised an investigation, and thus tacitly and feebly gave 
himself into the hands of his opponents. 

Seeing that it was a situation which demanded that some 

one go out to the firing line and that the politicians were 

without resources, together with Snyder, the auditor 

general, I put out a statement showing in detail every cent 

28 433 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

expended in any way in connection with the capitol. This 
gave the people the exact and whole truth. We then invited 
Charles Emory Smith, editor of the Press; George W. Ochs, 
editor of the Ledger, and Charles H. Heustis, editor of the 
Inquirer, to come to Harrisburg and examine the building 
and the books. This was going into the camp of the enemy 
and showed courage and self-confidence. They declined, 
which displayed weakness and made an impression favorable 
to us. Then I made arrangements with the railroads for 
unusually low excursion rates over the state and invited the 
people to come and see for themselves. The newspapers 
tried ridicule, calling them "penny-a-milers," but without 
result. Sixty thousand of the people came. On one 
Saturday I shook hands with three thousand people, which 
left my arm very sore. The next Saturday I shook hands 
with ten thousand and, strange to say, that did not affect 
me. They went home filled with enthusiasm and told their 
neighbors. There must have been a hundred men who said 
to me: ''I don't care a d — n what it cost; it is worth the 
money," and many of them were themselves mechanics who 
knew the difference between good and inferior work. Stuart 
was elected by a small majority and I have always believed 
it was our efforts which saved him. It gave me profound 
satisfaction to know that the main purpose of the scandal 
was thwarted. There are two substantial answers to the 
charges made, which can never be overcome — the one 
material and the other financial: 

1. The capitol with its equipment, standing on the banks 
of the Susquehanna, where it may be seen of all men, expert 
and inexpert. 

2. The reports of the state treasurer and Smull, which 
show that the moneys in the treasury during my adminis- 
tration were greater than ever before or since, and that while 
under my successor the investigation and trials were being 
pushed to an inconsequential conclusion, those moneys 
were being depleted at the rate of a million dollars a year. 
434 



GOVERNOR, 1906 

And now I bid farewell, I hope, forever, to that malodor- 
ous scandal which followed so closely upon the completion 
of a marvelous and commendable achievement and whose 
purveyors may be likened to those vile fish that swim in 
the wake of a good ship, her prow buffeting the seas and her 
flag flying proudly in the breezes of Heaven, but seek only 
to feast their appetites upon the offal which is cast overboard. 

The capitol was dedicated on the 4th of October. It 
was a cold, dismal, rainy day. Penrose, Knox, congress- 
men, the state officials, the National Guard and the state 
constabulary all participated. The streets of Harrisburg 
and the capitol grounds were crowded with people. I had 
been much concerned about the safety of the platform. We 
called for bids and one was so much lower than all the rest 
that it aroused suspicion. Upon investigation it was found 
that this contractor had planned to lessen the strength 
of some of the supports. Then the matter was handed over 
to Huston, the architect, with my threat to behead him if 
anything happened, and he gave to it every care. Roose- 
velt delivered a forceful oration. It was than that he said, 
alluding to the work of the special session: **It is surely not 
too much to say that this body of substantive legislation 
marks an epoch in the history of the practical betterment 
of political conditions not merely for your state but for all 
other states." The notes of this address, used at the time 
and signed for me on the platform, I had bound for preser- 
vation. He has a stage habit of singling out some individual 
in the audience and giving to him special attention. On this 
occasion he picked out an old soldier, much to the delight 
of the veteran and his comrades. It had been widely pro- 
claimed that the President would dedicate the building. 
Nothing would have been more inappropriate and I saw to 
it that this task was performed by the head of the common- 
wealth in an address which ran: 

The capitol is much more than the building in which the 
legislature holds its sessions, the courts sit in judgment and the 

435 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

executive exercises his authority. It is a concrete manifestation 
of the importance and power of the state and an expression of 
its artistic development. Intelligent observers, who look upon 
the structure and examine the proportions, the arrangements 
and the ornamentation, are enabled to divine at what stage in 
the advance of civilization the people have arrived and to deter- 
mine with sufl5cient accuracy what have been their achievements 
in the past and what are their aspirations for the future. 

The commission charged with the duty of erecting this capitol 
and those who have had responsibility in connection with it have 
felt that in architecture and appointments the outcome ought to 
be worthy of the commonwealth. They have not forgotten the 
essential and unique relation which Pennsylvania has borne in 
the development of our national life; that in her first capitol the 
Government of the United States had its birth; that during ten 
years of the early and uncertain existence of that government she 
gave it a home; that since its origin what has ever been accepted 
as the "Pennsylvania idea" has been the dominant political 
principle of its administration; and that its present unparalleled 
material prosperity rests finally in large measure upon the out- 
come of her furnaces and mines. Nor have they forgotten that 
the thought of William Penn, enunciated over two centuries ago, 
and rewritten around the dome of this capitol, has become the 
fundamental principle of our National Constitution, acknowledged 
now by all men as axiomatic truth. 

There is a sermon which the many Americans who hie hither 
in the future years to study chaste art, expressed in form, as 
today they go to the Parthenon and St. Peter's, to the cathedrals 
of Antwerp and Cologne, will be enabled to read in these stones of 
polished marble and hewn granite. When Moses set out to build 
"an altar under the hill and twelve pillars," he, beforehand, "wrote 
all the words of the Lord." Let us take comfort in the belief that 
in like manner this massive and beautiful building, which we have 
in our later time erected, will be for an example and inspiration 
to all of the people, encouraging them in pure thoughts and incit- 
ing them to worthy deeds. Let us bear in mind the injunction of 
the far-seeing founder of the province, which made it indeed, as 
he hoped, the seed of a nation — "that we may do the thing that 
is truly wise and just." 

On behalf of the commonwealth, as its chief executive, I 
accept this capitol and now, with pride, with faith and with hope, 
I dedicate it to the public use and to the purposes for which it 
was designed and constructed. 
436 



GOVERNOR, 1906 

Huston, the architect, who was a warm enthusiast and 
elate with the success of his production, caused to be made 
a gold key for the main door of the capitol, to be used as the 
symbol of the transfer, which he presented and inscribed to 
me. One of Roosevelt's attendants proposed to carry off 
this key as a memento for the President, but I interfered 
and prevented its accomplishment. It was before the 
dinner which I gave to Roosevelt at the executive mansion 
that Penrose came to me and asked me whether I would not 
send an invitation to Charles Emory Smith', explaining that 
they wanted to try to get him in Une and evidently expecting 
me to object. I replied: ''Certainly," and sent the invi- 
tation. Smith, although he was daily printing falsehoods 
about me, promptly accepted. At the dinner Penrose came 
to Roosevelt, who sat on my right, and said: 

''Now, Mr. President, won't you talk to Smith?" 

"I will do what I can with him, " was the answer. 

I escorted Smith up to the head of the table and they 
had a long conference. 

On the 17th of September, accompanied by the adjutant 
general and the staff, I went to Antietam, Maryland, to 
accept the monuments of the Third, Fourth, Seventh and 
Eighth Pennsylvania Reserves. On one of my official visits 
to Antietam an unusual and rather poetic little incident 
occurred. From the midst of the marching troops a rabbit 
ran out and jumped up upon the rostrum. In my speech 
I contrasted it as a symbol of peace and safety where forty 
years before destruction raged. 

And now we come to the end. The final message made 
some comments on conditions, but no suggestions, leaving 
those to my successor. The newspaper correspondents at 
Harrisburg, regardless of the policies of the journals they 
represented, had grown to be my friends, and this, despite 
of the fact that I had never granted any unusual favor. The 
time had come when attention could not be misunderstood, 
and on January 3, 1907, I invited them to a dinner at the 

437 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

mansion, where we had a sociable and enjoyable time and 
much warm-hearted expression of good feeling. John P. 
Dohoney, always staunch and rehable; George J. Brennan, 
bright as a new coin and effervescent as vichy water; the 
sensible Frank Bell, the able George Nox McCain, Peter 
Bolger, Harry S. Calvert, Peter J. Hoban, Robert W. 
Herbert and A. Boyd Hamilton, who need no emphasizing, 
and many more were there. I parted with them very, very 
happy over the pleasant and agreeable relations, accom- 
panied with entire confidence we had all along sustained. 

The staff gave me a dinner at the Bellevue-Stratford 
in Philadelphia, following one given to them at the executive 
mansion, and there presented me with an immense silver 
loving cup appropriately inscribed. 

The day before the close, the heads of the departments 
called me into the governor's reception room and there, 
through Carson, presented me with a silver set of one 
hundred and sixty-three pieces, each engraved with the 
family coat of arms. The piece de resistance was a huge 
and handsome salver. So far as I am aware, nothing so 
elaborate had occurred in the experience of any former 
governor and I was overwhelmed with this expression of 
sympathy and kindly feeling. 

January 14th, Governor Stuart was inaugurated. That 
night my family spent at the Lochiel Hotel, and the next 
morning went down to Pennypacker's Mills. 



438 



CHAPTER XIV 

Comment and Review 

IT must be conceded that nearly the whole of what at 
the outset I had planned to do as governor had been 
accomplished and in addition the beneficial legislation 
of the special session and the completion of the capitol. 
This success was largely due to the fact that, subordinate 
to the interests of the state, the duties to the party, to the 
legislature, to those who were working with me in the 
administration, and to individuals were not forgotten. It 
is a regrettable fact that the chief obstacle in the accomplish- 
ment of effective public work is the modern newspaper. 
This is not because the editor is any lower in ethics or in 
intelhgence naturally than the politician, but because the 
journals represent a great money-making power entirely 
irresponsible and without any kind of control or supervision. 
They ought to be and might be a great help to a man trjing 
to work out correct results, but he is compelled to do without 
their assistance and generally to overcome their opposition. 
The succeeding administration soon gave evidence of 
what was destined to be its chief characteristics. 

1. The divorce congress called by Pennsylvania to 
endeavor to secure a system of uniformity in divorce legis- 
lation, participated in by leading lawyers and divines from 
all over the country, after long and careful consideration 
reported a statute proposed to the different states. It was 
adopted in New Jersey, Delaware and some other states. 
The attorney general of Pennsylvania declared that there 
was "no divorce evil" and this serious effort to improve our 
morals and our lives was killed in the house of its friends and 
originators. 

2. The act making newspapers responsible for negligence 

439 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

and requiring them to print the names of owners and editors 
was repealed after this fashion. The latter part of it was 
immediately re-enacted and this enabled it to be said, with 
a conscience none too nice, that the whole act had been 
repealed. By this course the administration secured such 
popularity as could be gained by newspaper favorable 
report. 

3. An act of assembly provided for a commission to erect 
a statue to Senator Quay "on the capitol grounds at Harris- 
burg." The commission had prepared, by a competent 
artist, a marble statue to be placed in one of the capitol 
arches and it was now ready for erection. There was the 
usual outcry and, in obedience to it, instead of to the law, 
the statue lay in a box for two years. This was a plain and 
direct violation of a statute by those sworn to see that the 
laws were enforced. At the next session of the legislature a 
mandatory act was passed and the statue was put in its 
place. 

4. Neither the district attorney of the county nor the 
attorney general conducted the prosecution of those who 
had so well builded the capitol. Private counsel of capacity 
and experience were employed for the purpose. But the 
attorney general sat with them through all of the trials and 
saw to it that the weight of the commonwealth was thrown 
against the defendants. 

It cannot be said that regard for the public weal inspired 
any of these acts. Nor so far as the head of the adminis- 
tration is concerned was there any ill will or personal motive. 
In his kindly and good-hearted way, no doubt, he wished 
things were otherwise. But it was a case of sheer lack of 
will power to resist the influences surrounding him. 



1524 Walnut Street, 

PmLADELPHIA. 

My dear Governor: 

You did it better than well, and personally I thank you. I 
did not say with what double gratitude the senators of our Big 

440 



COMMENT AND REVIEW 

Medicine Lodges (why did I not say Sachems) regard your 
appointment of Le Conte. I hear but one opinion; and mine 
you know. 

May you have a reign glorious for the dear old state. 

Yours with most friendly regard, 

Weir Mitchell. 
His Excellency, 

The Governor. 



2043 Arch Street, Phila., Pa., 
April 21, 1903. 
To His Excellency, 

Governor Pennypacker. 
My dear Sir: 

Permit me to express my high appreciation of your inde- 
pendent and excellent administration of your great ofl&ce; and to 
add that I sincerely pray for God's richest blessings on you, so 
that you may continue to be "a terror to evil doers" and also 
"a praise to them that do well." 

Yours most truly, 

Cyrus D. Foss. 



Land Title Building, Phila., Pa., 

September 11, 1903. 
His Excellency, 

Sam' I W. Pennypacker. 
My dear Governor: 

I am much obliged to you for directing the sending to me of a 
copy of "Vetoes." Within my memory there has never been a 
time when a governor of the commonwealth stood with such 
intelligence and determination as a safeguard against vicious 
legislation. Thanks to you, schemes of fraud and plunder, great 
in number as well as in importance, were frustrated. 

Certainly in this most vital particular, we are all immensely 
in your debt. 

Very sincerly yours, 

John G. Johnson. 



Southeast Corner 17th & Spruce Sts. 
My dear Governor: 

I am just recovering from a severe illness from appendicitis, 
and am, therefore, quite unable to accept the honor of your 

441 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

appointment as state delegate to the prison congress to be held 
at Louisville, October 3-8, 1903. 

I take the opportunity of congratulating you on your recent 
appointments of Messrs. Day and Hart as inspectors of Eastern 
Penitentiary. I feared a calamity there from the extremely ill- 
chosen appointments of your predecessor, but was not aware 
until the pending investigation what mischief had been accom- 
plished in three years of bad government. 

I think the men you have appointed may be depended on to 
hunt out the wretched business and correct it, though it cannot 
be done in a day. I am, my dear Governor, very truly yours, 

I. J. WiSTAR 

Philadelphia, September 18, 1903. 
To the Hon. S. W. Pennypacker, 

Governor of Pennsylvania. 



Philadelphia, June 2, 1904. 
My dear Friknd: 

If the current of events drifts you our way — Come. 

Sincerely, 

D. N. Fell. 



February 29th, 1904. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Harrisburg, Pa. 
My dear Governor: 

I have been seriously perplexed about writing to you. I have, 
for a long time thought it my duty and yet have been so con- 
scious of the little weight that you have given to my advice in 
the past, that I felt that I might be annoying rather than serving 
you, as I wished. 

Had you only vetoed that miserable libel bill there would have 
been no occasion to write at all. I regret that the results of 
your signature have even surpassed my worst anticipations, which 
were none too good. 

A lot of people, who have the ear of the public, have been led 
to believe that you are their personal enemy, and it is only natural 
that you should be the subject of their assaults. 

On the other hand, I am one of those who know and believe 
in the rectitude of your purpose. I know you are an honest man, 
and I know whatever position you obtain you will perform your 
duties conscientiously, and I am, therefore, most anxious lest 
you may again do something permanently injurious to you. 
442 



COMMENT AND REVIEW 

Close friends have urged me to beg you to withdraw from your 
candidacy or alleged candidacy for a position upon the Supreme 
Bench. I cannot do this. If, under an attack to the effect that 
you have sought something in defiance of legal ethics, you with- 
draw as a candidate, there will be so much confession in it that 
your future will become blank as far as I can see. Having 
announced that you will accept, if offered, the position, you must 
stand to your position. I know, in saying this, I am giving you 
advice contrary to the wishes of many of my closest friends, but 
when one attempts to advise a friend, he must be loyal to that 
friendship and no other, and I am convinced that you would be 
committing political suicide should you yield now. 

Did I not believe you to be thoroughly honest, and did I not 
know that, whatever the complications, you would strive to do 
your duty, I would join with them; but say what they can, you 
have been an honest governor and you will make an honest 
Supreme Court judge and any quasi-confession, on your part, 
that you won't, will be the grossest injustice to yourself. 

Now, my dear Governor, I am a fool in comparison to your- 
self, in many things and claim superiority in none, but I cannot 
feel that I would not be of some service to you did you consult 
me or rather follow me in some of these matters. 

If the nomination is tendered to you, do accept it, and then 
make a kind of a judge that will answer all criticisms. Your 
very honesty makes you do things in a way that, were they done 
by a dishonest man, would convict you, and you are now in the 
peculiar position of having every act interpreted by the press in 
the worst light to which it is susceptible, so that you must be 
more than circumspect and only write and talk with the full 
knowledge that what you say will be conveyed to the public 
through unfriendly channels. Of course, the press feel that you 
have done it an injustice and they don't want that unjust act 
interpreted by one whom they believe to be their unflinching 
enemy, and you must bear this in mind in all you say and do. 

I hope I am not offending you, but friendship has its duties 
and I can no longer stand idly by whilst I believe you to be urged 
to a course that I am convinced would be fatal to you. 

If you do not like me for this, I cannot help it, for I would 
not like myself should I longer refrain from saying what is in my 
mind on this subject. 

Believe me to be. 

Faithfully your friend, 

George H. Earle, Jr. 

443 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

April 18th, 1904. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Harrisburg, Pa. 
My dear Governor: 

You do not know how I appreciate your knowledge that I am 
so interested in your welfare as to prize the information that you 
have sent me. 

There is not the slightest doubt that you have acted unselfishly 
and for the pubUc welfare. But that is not a startling proposi- 
tion to me, as I have never known you to do otherwise. You 
have also done what, had I consulted my selfish interest, I would 
have wished you to do. 

What I objected to, and still object to, was that you were 
being attacked for having done what you considered your duty, 
and precluded from receiving something that you were entitled 
to take, because of bitterness engendered against you by your 
conscientious performance of duty. 

My own feeling was that you had a perfect right to go on the 
Supreme Bench, and that you should not be persecuted for con- 
sidering that right, because your conscience had driven you to 
making pubUc enemies. 

You know I did not agree with you about the hbel act, but I 
knew you acted from a sense of duty, and it was atrocious that 
you should have been hounded, as you were. 

My feeling about the matter is so complex that I hardly know 
whether I make myself intelligible. I wanted you to remain 
governor very much, no one is more interested in having that 
office in the hands of a fearless and honest man; but I wanted 
more that you should get what you had a right to desire, and 
also that there should be no risk that any one should think that 
you had given up your just desires, because of unmerited abuse. 

Your course, however, may prove to be the wisest after all, 
as some of your detractors may, in view of your self-sacrifice, 
begin to be ashamed of themselves. This, at any rate, is my 
ardent desire. 

Thanking you again, I remain. 

Your sincere friend, 

George H. Earle, Jr. 

Is it not a little disturbing that as intelligent a body as "The 
Bar" can be stampeded by newspaper clamor, as it has just 
been? I suppose character counts for something still; but after 
this I am at a loss to say how much. 
444 



COMMENT AND REVIEW 

Office of the Attorney General, 

Washington, D. C, June 23, 1904. 
The Governor: 

Sib : — I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your com- 
mission appointing me a senator to represent the State of Penn- 
sylvania in the Senate of the United States, to supply the vacancy 
in that body occasioned by the death of Hon. Matthew Stanley 
Quay, until the next meeting of the Legislature of the Common- 
wealth of Pennsylvania. 

I accept the appointment to take effect July 1, 1904, that 
being the day immediately following the taking effect of my 
resignation of the office of Attorney General of the United States. 
I beg to add that I fully appreciate the great honor you have 
done me, and that I shall assume the duties of the high office you 
have deemed me worthy to fill, with a full appreciation of its 
grave responsibilities and importance. 

With great respect, your obedient servant, 

Philander C. Knox. 
Hon. Samuel W. Penmjpacker, 

Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 



Indianapolis, June 28, 1904. 
My dear Governor: 

I regretted not seeing you after the close of the convention at 
Chicago, for I wished to thank you for your great kindness in 
making a seconding speech. I now take the first opportunity to 
write you and to say that I am profoundly grateful for your very 
generous courtesy. With best wishes, I remain 

Sincerely your friend, 



Charles W. Fairbanks. 



Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 
Governor, Harrisburg, Pa. 



June 29, 1904. 
Dear Governor: 

I said to Durham in Chicago, that your reluctance at accept- 
ing the nomination for governor, was only overcome by the 
assurance of Quay and others, that it would not interfere with 
the only ambition you had; and that this obHgation, since Quay's 
death, had become a sacred one. He agreed with me. 

Yours sincerely, 
Hon. Sam'l W. Pennypacker. David H. Lane. 

445 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Philadelphia, October 7, 1904. 
Hon. S. W. Pennypacker, 

Executive Chamber, Harrishurg, Pa. 
My dear Governor: 

In the new Bellevue-Stratford Mr. Boldt has fitted up a room 
known as the "Clover" room, and he will be the guest of honor 
at the first dinner the club will give there on Thursday evening 
the 20th instant. We have all great affection for you, for no one 
has ever lampooned the club as handsomely and eloquently as 
you have done, and there is nothing that our people enjoy more. 
Won't you let me know that you can come, and the invitation of 
the club will be sent you. 

Sincerely yours, 

A. K. McClure. 



October fifteenth, 1904. 
His Excellency, Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Governor of Pennsylvania, Harrishurg. 
My dear Governor Pennypacker: 

Permit me to express to you the sincere appreciation of the 
Academy for your splendid address of welcome to the foreign 
delegates of the International Peace Congress. I know that the 
fact of your presence, as well as your address, Avere much appre- 
ciated by the delegates. 

Very respectfully yours, 

L. S. RowE, 
President. 



Philadelphia, Penna., 

Oct. 28, 1904. 
(Personal and confidential) 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Executive Chamber, Harrishurg, Penna. 
Dear Governor: 

I have yours of 27th instant, in reference to Mr. Durham. 
I realize and appreciate the force of your suggestion as to Mr. 
Durham's visits to Harrishurg from your point of view as 
explained by you. As a matter of fact, however, I think we can 
safely put the matter on the ground of his health at the present 
time, as he has been ordered by his physician to go back to the 
Adirondacks immediately after election for a month. Durham 
is getting along very well and holding his own first-rate, but it 
will be necessary for him to exercise very great care during the 
446 



COMMENT AND REVIEW 

winter. I will explain the situation more fully to you when I 
have an opportunity of seeing you personally, as there are phases 
of it which I can not very well write about, and in the meantime 
I suggest that you let the matter drop until we can meet. I fully 
appreciate the fact that you are viewing the subject with a view 
to the interests of us all. 

Yours truly, 

Boies Penrose. 



December 6, 1904. 
My DEAR Governor: 

I am much pleased with your note and am glad that I was 
able to accept. 

Sincerely, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 
Governor of Pennsylvania, 
Harrishurg, Pa. 



Pittsburgh, Pa., January 12th, 1905. 
My dear Governor: 

I read your message of January 3d to the General Assembly 
of the State of Pennsylvania with a great deal of pleasure and had 
hoped to be able to get over to Harrisburg yesterday and con- 
gratulate you upon your able document, but owing to pressing 
business matters I was unable to be away from my duties here. 

You certainly did credit to yourself when you wrote the mes- 
sage, and I have today received a copy of the message from the 
adjutant general's office in pamphlet form which I shall take 
home and preserve for future reference. The message shows to 
the people of this commonwealth just what kind of a governor 
they have, a good thinker and a man of integrity and honest 
purpose, and if I may be permitted to quote the words of our 
mutual friend, the late lamented Senator Quay, "When Governor 
Pennypacker lays down the mantle of executive of the State of 
Pennsylvania, he will be looked upon as the greatest governor 
that this state ever had." I don't know that these are his exact 
words, but that was the tenor of what he said. I hope to be able 
to get over to Harrisburg and have a talk with you sometime 
soon. 

Remember me with much kindness to Mrs. Pennypacker and 
your daughters, and also to Secretary Wharton. 

447 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Believe me, my dear sir, to be as ever your sincere and true 
friend, 

Very respectfully, 

Sam'l Moody, 
General Passenger Agent. 
Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Executive Mansion, Harrisburg, Pa. 



January 23, 1905. 
Dear Governor Pennypacker: 

I think it is to your courtesy that I owe the copy of your 
Inaugural Address. I had intended to write to you to thank you 
for the address' before I received this copy. I am so much 
obliged to you, as it seems to me that every man of intelligence 
should be, for your admirable and successful attempt to check 
the license of the press. 

Our Vice President, Wilson, once said to me, I think with the 
tears in his eyes, that since the Tweed scandal no public man in 
America was sure for ten days that the press of America would 
not undertake to break down his character forever. Wilson said 
that since the New York Times won distinction by exposing the 
Tweed scandals, every newspaper man in America thought he 
could make himself famous by exposing somebody. He referred 
at that time to the habit of ascribing the worst possible motive 
to every act of every pubUc man, which seems to be engrained 
now in the management of the daily press. That you have done 
so much to check this habit ought to be a matter of pride to you. 
With great respect, I am. 

Truly yours, 

Edward E. Hale, 
Chaplain to the Senate. 



March 15th, 1905. 
My dear Governor: 

I learn that you have a most serious duty to perform to one 
of your profession. It is the appointment of several judges for 
Allegheny County. My friend. Judge Cohen, was appointed by 
Governor Stone and by reason of dissension in Republican ranks 
the whole Republican ticket, carrying the good judge with it, much 
to the regret of good citizens generally, was defeated. 

All I can say is that, in my opinion you would make no mis- 
take if you re-appoint him and I beUeve that I express the opin- 
ion of the best people of the "Smoky City." 
448 



COMMENT AND REVIEW 

Please present my kindest greetings to your good wife and 
receive them for your good self. I have very pleasant memories 
of you both and hope we are to meet again. 

Always very truly yours, 

Andrew Carnegie. 
Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker, 
Harrisburg, Pa. 



March 15, 1906. 
Dear Governor Pennypacker: 

Having the pleasure and privilege to know you personally, I 
address these lines to you on behalf of a German, Trautwin, who 
has been sentenced to be hanged on March 28th. Will you please 
treat these lines as altogether personal and private. 

Today I had a letter from Trautwin in which he says : 

"I gave my wife a good home, but when I was at work she 
had sinful intercourse with an Italian. I told my wife that the 
people were speaking about her, but she would not listen. At 
last I found her myself at night, at nine o'clock in company with 
an Italian with whom she had had sinful intercourse. I become 
so infuriated that I could not speak. I drew a pistol and fired a 
shot. My wife fell and the Italian ran away. I did not intend 
to shoot her. You cannot tell what love can drive a man to do." 

The letter of Trautwin -gives me the impression that he is not 
a bad fellow. He is absolutely uneducated and perhaps hardly fit 
to accurately state his case. When facing the shame of his wife 
he seems to have lost all self-control and blazed away. 

Knowing that class of Germans so well, the rural, among 
which I was personally raised, I thought it fit to send you these 
lines. I want it to be strictly understood that I in no way want 
to interfere with the findings of your courts, I simply want to give 
you my private and personal opinion about Trautwin and the act 
he committed, leaving it absolutely to your judgment what action 
you perhaps may deem fit to take with regard to the man. 
Believe me, dear Governor, 

Yours most sincerely, 

H. Sternberg, 
German Ambassador. 



Philadelphia, 4-13-1905. 
My dear Governor: 

Swing your axe. Yours always, 

Edward M. Paxson. 
29 449 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Washington, D. C, April 13, 1905. 
Governor Pennypacker, 

Harrishurg, Pa. 
To you and the members of the legislature I return my pro- 
found acknowledgment for the interest in our Jamestown 
Celebration. I shall refuse ever to ride again to Gettysburg with 
a drawn sabre. 

FiTZHUGH Lee. 



His Excellency, 

Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 
Governor Pennypacker, 
My dear Sir: 

May I beg your Excellency to consider favorably the appro- 
priations made for our charitable institutions which are really 
doing the work which the state should otherwise do. 

I beg your Excellency's special consideration for the Protec- 
tory for Boys above Norristown, which contains 300 inmates and 
will be able to receive 300 more, when the new wing shall be com- 
pleted, which is now in progress of erection. 

I have the honor to remain. 

Your faithful servant, 

P. J. Ryan. 



Philadelphia, April 28, 1905. 
My dear Governor: 

I send you a note from Edward S. Buckley, trustee, as to the 
appropriation to the Pottsville Hospital. 

The Evening Bulletin last night in its correspondence columns 
had an article on the Ripper bills, in which the writer refers to 
you as "Easily the brainiest and greatest governor Pennsylvania 
has ever had." It stirs me to the depths to have the truth spoken. 
The conviction is everywhere. 

Most sincerely yours, 

Hampton L. Carson. 



Philadelphia, Pa., May 2, 1905 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Executive Building, Harrishurg. 
My dear Governor: 

I received your communication of the 27th inst. on my return 
to Philadelphia to-day. A large number of lawyers are opposed 
to Judge Biddle's renomination on the ground of his advanced 
450 



COMMENT AND REVIEW 

age. The Republican organization is also unfavorable to his 
renomination. 

I have told all of Judge Biddle's friends, who have approached 
me on the subject, that the only opposition I had to him, was 
based upon the sentiment of the lawyers and the organization 
who all feel his age should bar him. 

However, in view of your request, it will afford me great 
pleasure to renominate him. 

Sincerely yours, 

Israel W. Durham. 



Harrisburg, Pa., May 5, 1905. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Harrisburg, Pa. 
My dear Governor Pennypacker: 

Permit me to say that your treatment of myself with respect 
to Senate Bill No. 211 has been most agreeable to my feelings, 
and I am greatly your debtor for it. 

Yesterday I was compelled to stop in Richmond on my way 
north, and it may not be unwelcome for you to know that I there 
heard sentiments of the most profound kindness expressed about 
yourself in view of the manner in which you had received Gen- 
eral Fitzhugh Lee when the latter was in this city. You certainly 
have a number of very warm friends in Virginia, and I am sure if 
upon occasion you should visit that state, you would receive a 
warm welcome. 

Very sincerely yours, 

Lyman D. Gilbert. 



Chambersburg, Pa., 6/13/1905. 
My dear Governor Pennypacker: 

My letter yesterday was intended as the formal acknowledg- 
ment which the occasion seemed to require. I want this to speed- 
ily follow, assuring you of my most grateful appreciation of the 
preferment you have bestowed upon me. 

To be selected as a justice of the Supreme Court is in itself a 
distinguished honor. How much is that honor enhanced M'hen 
the selection is made by one himself distinguished as a jurist, and 
known to cherish its highest and best ideals in connection with 
the Bench. When I think of the honor you have done me, it is 
in this light that I attempt its estimate. It shall be my constant 
endeavor to justify so far as I may by faithful effort, the selection 
you have made. 

451 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

With assurances of my high regard, and grateful appreciation 
of your kindness, I beg to remain, 

Very faithfully yours. 



John Stewart. 



Governor Pennypacker. 



Philadelphia, Pa., Oct. 11, '05. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Executive Chamber, Harrisburg, Pa. 
Letter received. We are in a crisis and need all support. 
If Philadelphia fight is not won we will have a contest all over the 
state. If we win we will probably have no trouble for some time 
in Pennsylvania. We confidently expect to win Philadelphia 
contest but must make every effort until election day. I am con- 
vinced that no party conditions in the state can be injured by 
your presence in Philadelphia and it would greatly help in our 
contest. If I do not hear to the contrary from you to-night or 
to-morrow morning, I will have announced that you will be pres- 
ent at Academy of Music meeting on the eighteenth. You sug- 
gest that you will have to speak out on certain matters. I will 
have to leave this entirely to your best judgment and discretion, 
with full confidence in your loyalty to the cause and your sincere 
interest in our local success. 

Boies Penrose. 



November 13, 1905. 
My dear Judge: 

Accept my warmest thanks for your goodness in the matter 
of Jacobs. Your prompt kindness has reheved me from a posi- 
tion which I thought it right for me to take, but which without 
your help would have been very distasteful. 

As regards your nephew's apphcation I have had a talk with 
the chairman of the committee and from his statement it would 
appear that the appHcant is not only outside of the letter of the 
rules but of their spirit as well, and this on a liberal construction of 
them. 

However, I am to have the record sent to me and shall look 
into the matter to see whether there is any rightful way of modi- 
fying this conclusion. 

I may now congratulate you upon holding your rightful posi- 
tion as the properly chosen guide and leader of the Republican 
party of the commonwealth. 

Carson will tell you that in the very rush of the flood of abuse, 
452 



COMMENT AND REVIEW 

I never for a moment lost my faith that sometime during your 
term of office, the tide would be sure to turn. This was based 
merely on the simple faith that character, learning and devotion 
to duty cannot for long be mistaken for their opposites. 

An amusing feature of the praise of which you are now the 
victim, is the naive forgetfulness to call upon you for a repeal of 
the press "muzzier," A more convincing testimony to the insin- 
cerity of the howlers could not well be. 

Within these last few minutes Senator John M. Scott said to 
me: "Since Quay's death, your friend is the first politician in 
Pennsylvania." 

Amid unstinted laudation from opposite quarters there must 
be danger of getting giddy. 

By the way, have you considered the great reform in England 
of the ancient abuse of money in elections (including nomina- 
tions)? A conversation the other night with an English publicist 
brought the subject to my mind. Expenses there have been 
efficiently limited and regulated and above all, the thing works. 

I rather think that action in that direction will be more potent 
than in the respects concerning which there is so much clamor, 
patent ballot honesty, patent registration honesty, and other 
mechanical factors of morality. 

Very truly yours, 

Mayer Sulzberger. 
Samuel W. Pennypacker. 



January 14th, 1906. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 
My dear Governor: 

I have your letter of January 12th and thank you sincerely 
for the cordial invitation to make the executive mansion ray 
home at Harrisburg, if I should visit the city, in response to your 
request to have Senator Penrose and myself "come to Harrisburg 
and go over with me the proposed legislation at the special ses- 
sion, if it would be agreeable to you." 

I regret that I cannot accept your invitation, because the 
duties of my office are so exacting, numerous and important that 
I find it impossible, by giving from twelve to eighteen hours every 
day of the week to their consideration, to discharge them to my 
satisfaction. 

453 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

I have been placed upon three of the most active and impor- 
tant committees of the Senate, one of which, the Interoceanic 
Canals Committee, has undertaken the investigation of every- 
thing relating to the Panama Canal and expects to hold practi- 
cally continuous sessions until that work is completed. The 
work of the Judiciary Committee, of which I am a member, is 
voluminous and important, and I find the fact that I have been 
attorney general has added to my labor upon that committee. 

I am interested as a citizen of Pennsylvania in the subjects of 
the proposed legislation at the extra session of its legislature you 
have called, and heartily approve, as you well know, enacting 
into law the suggestions contained in your proclamation; but 
having fully and freely made my attitude towards these subjects 
generally known, I do not see how I can be of further use. 

Wholly apart from the impossibility of being able to give the 
matter attention on account of lack of time, I seriously doubt 
the wisdom of a senator of the United States involving himself in 
responsibilities in respect to legislation in his state. The Com- 
monwealth of Pennsylvania has all of the machinery of govern- 
ment, and all the brains and experience in the personnel of its 
government to deal wisely and with technical accuracy with its 
affairs. Voluntary assumption of responsibilities for legislation 
by one upon whom the laws of the commonwealth cast no duties 
would imply a doubt as to the efficiency of the state government 
that cannot be entertained. 

I do not beUeve the practice of United States Senators actively 
concerning themselves with state legislation is general or is gen- 
erally approved. 

I anticipate that your wisdom in convening the legislature in 
extraordinary session will bring lasting good to the common- 
wealth and add to the fame you have already won as one of its 
most conscientious and able governors. 

Sincerely yours, 

P. C. Knox. 



Feby. 19th, 1906. 
My dear Friend: 

I trust it is not too late for me to congratulate you on the 
splendid work of the extra session, which is entirely due to your 
foresight in calling the legislature together, and your firmness in 
standing out for the radical measures of reform which have grown 
into laws under your excellent direction. It is a calamity that 
454 



COMMENT AND REVIEW 

the organic law of our state prevents the people from continuing 
you in the office which you have done so much to adorn. 

Very sincerely yours, 

George T. Oliver. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 
Harrisburg. 



March 6, 1906. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Executive Chamber, Harrisburg, Penna. 
Dear Governor: 

I have received the poem entitled "Greater Pittsburgh" pub- 
lished in the Pittsburgh Leader, and forwarded to me by you. 
The poem is correct in the suggestion that had it not been for your 
efforts the Greater Pittsburgh bill would have failed at the extra 
session of the legislature. I congratulate you on the result. 

Yours sincerely, 

Boies Penrose. 



May 3, 1906. 
Mt dear Major: 

Good for your governor! His proclamation has the true 
ring of American statesmanship. It is a consolation to know 
that we have, at least, one Pennypacker in a postion of power 
and possessing the courage to put the curb on anarchy: pro- 
claiming the "square deal" for every honest man willing to work. 
This is the policy that, in the end, will safeguard the lawful rights 
of labor and save the country from unnecessary bloodshed. He 
is a man of the old school and we need more of them. . . . 

Sincerely, 

M. Kerwin. 



May 16th, 1906. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Harrisburg, Pa. 
Dear Governor: 

Your letter both pleased and surprised me. I thought you 
understood me well enough to know that I have always felt that 
my deep interest in you was making me a nuisance. I have 
always predicted that before your term was out the people would 
know what they know now, that is, that you were the most fear- 
less, public-spirited, and honest governor that we have had in 

455 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

this generation. Your courage, at times, has made me fear you 
would combat evils that could not, at present, be remedied and 
so lose support that would enable you to remedy some that could. 
You have never done a thing that I have not understood the 
highness of your motives but you have done some things that I 
wanted you not to. Lately you have been making yourself so 
thoroughly understood and appreciated that I have gladly taken 
advantage of the growing unanimity of opinion in your favor to 
let you alone, and you don't know how delighted I am to find 
that you notice it. I am thus assured that my importunities 
have not tired you in the past. Now you understand just exactly 
why I have not bothered you. 

As to the Press article, some one has to speak in favor of the 
right when so speaking is unpopular. The more unpopular, the 
greater the necessity; and so I was fooUsh enough to call atten- 
tion to what we all have believed in, and shall all believe in again. 
The Republican party has done much for this country. It has 
often created and preserved prosperity by fighting crazes. For 
the first time in its history, it is yielding to one. If it would only 
say "we have made this prosperity, it is our child, and shall have 
our protection," and stand to its guns, it will beat Bryanism to 
death as it always has. But with its leader caring more for popu- 
larity than principle, courageous, as he is uninformed, I, myself, 
am convinced that it will have to go out of power in order that it 
may return chastened and more trusted than ever. Tillman and 
Bryan are going to beat him to death at their game; he could 
have beaten them to death had he kept his promise and con- 
tinued the policy of WilHam McKinley, as he promised to do. I 
worked hard for Roosevelt's re-election, had great admiration for 
him, and still have, but I very much fear him. Your careers have 
been remarkably unlike. He started with an almost inexhausti- 
ble popularity, which is daily fading av/ay. You incurred tre- 
mendous misrepresentation and criticism and are now being 
imderstood and appreciated. I remember you once wrote me 
that "he who shall try to save his life will lose it." 

It is surprising at this time to find how many "old things" 
are true when the greater part of the world is engaged in dis- 
crediting and despising them. 

Now have I not written you a long enough letter to warn you 
against ever charging me again with neglect? 

As ever. 

Sincerely your friend, 
George H. Earle, Jr. 
456 



COMMENT AND REVIEW 

August 3, 1906. 
To His Excellency y 

The Governor oj Pennsylvania, 

Harrisburg, Penna. 
My dear Governor: 

The leases which have been signed with the farmers to secure 
to the United States the right to maneuver on their farms, con- 
tains the provision that the damages done to their crops and 
improvements will be adjusted by a board to consist of three 
members: A civilian to be appointed by the Secretary of War, a 
militia officer to be appointed by the Governor of Pennsylvania, 
and an army ofl&cer to be appointed by me. 

I have recommended that the civilian members be paid ten 
dollars per day for each day the board is in session, which will 
probably be from October 1st to October 14th, 1906, but so far 
have not been informed if this would be approved. 

I would be very much obliged if you can appoint the militia 
ofl&cer. 

It is desired that he be a resident of this locality; famihar with 
the values of the farms, crops and improvements and also that 
he be a lawyer. 

If you have no such officer in mind, I suggest the name of 
Captain Fred M. Ott who, I am informed, does combine the 
desired qualifications and who is the captain of the Governor's 
Troop, but you, of course, will know much more about this than 
can I. 

Trusting that we may have the pleasure of seeing you in 
camp before we leave Pennsylvania, with kindest regards, 

Very truly yours, 
F. D. Grant, 

Major-General U. S. Army, 
Commanding Camp Roosevelt. 



August 9, 1906. 
Dr. Martin G. Brumbaugh, 

SS32 Walnut Street, Philadelphia. 
Dear Doctor: 

You now have the opportunity to do a fine turn for me and 
for the man who, above others, is most responsible for your elec- 
tion as superintendent of schools. I refer to Mr. Shoemaker. 
He is desirous of succeeding the late Judge Hanna. Will you 
point out to the governor, personally, that Mr. Shoemaker left a 
bed of sickness to go to the meeting, and had he not been present 

457 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

an election could not have been held that night, as the vote would 
have been a tie with the result of a bitter fight in the board. 
Point out to him, also, the fact that Mr. Shoemaker was bound 
by every tie of friendship to vote with his old friends of the 
former board, the men who regarded him as one of them and who 
felt sure that he would be afraid to vote against them. Point out 
to the governor his sterling integrity and independence as shown 
on this occasion, as an evidence of his character. 

I believe Shoemaker to be one of the finest men in our board, 
and I am sure that he would make an upright and capable judge. 
Outside of the governor, himself, no man wielded the influence 
that Shoemaker did in your election. 

I speak of this matter in this frank way because I have all 
along felt that your election was the governor's fight, and that 
this ought to interest him at least, in a man who made, what 
seemed to be, great sacrifice in voting for you. At the same time, 
it is only fair to say that Mr. Shoemaker did not regard it as a 
sacrifice, inasmuch as it was a matter of conscience with him and 
this could mean no sacrifice. 

I am sending this letter to your house because I do not know 
just where you are at the present time, and I trust that when 
you receive this that you will see the governor personally if 
possible. 

With kind regards, 

Very truly yours, 

Geo. H. Cliff. 



New York, August 23, 1906. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Pennypacker's Mills, Schwenksville, Pa. 
My dear Governor: 

I am very grateful to you for your letter of August 19. I am 
not surprised at your original action, in view of the statement 
which Mr. Untermyer made that day, and I presume I should 
have felt like taking similar action but for the fact that he under- 
took to incur whatever expense he has incurred in full faith that 
every dollar of it would be returned by the policyholders, and 
the present indications are that his faith in the policyholders' 
interest was justified. 

With assurances of regard, and with the hope of a still better 
acquaintance with you in the future, I am, 

Very sincerely yours, 

Alton B. Parker. 
458 



COMMENT AND REVIEW 

RoxBURY, Mass., 

September 12, 1906. 
Mt dear Governor Pennypacker: 

I am sure I owe to your kindness the invitation to your great 
ceremonial of the 4th of October. 

I regret extremely that I cannot be present. I would like to 
congratulate you personally on the completion of so grand a mon- 
ument of your admirable administration. 
With great respect, I have the honor to be 

Your obedient servant, 

Edward E. Hale. 
(Chaplain U. S. Senate.) 



My dear Governor: 

I cannot express in language too strong the very great satis- 
faction with which I have seen the appointment you have made. 
The bar, as I do, will thank you in their hearts if not by their 
words. 

Mr. Ferguson, in a few months, with a little public service, 
will make a very good judge — honest, intelligent and capable. 

I am. 

Most sincerely yours, 

John G. Johnson. 
esth Nov. 



Nov. 27, 1906. 
My dear Governor: 

Your Thanksgiving Proclamation presents such a gratifying 
contrast to the usual proclamation by governors of other states 
that I cannot refrain from congratulating you on the thoroughly 
appropriate and felicitious language in which yours is con- 
structed. It is in itself a strong appeal to the grateful spirit and 
is brimful of scriptural adaptations. 

I hope you and yours are all well, and with great respect, beg 
to remain, my dear Governor, 

Very sincerely yours, 

Ethelbert Talbot. 



January 2, 1907. 
Dear Governor Pennypacker: 

I think you will be interested in the very vigorous presenta- 
tion of another vigorous executive which I send herewith. 

Mr. Roosevelt has rather jealously guarded these photo- 

459 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

graphs, and for a time declined to allow us to use them. It is by 
reason of the relaxation of the rigor of his restriction that I am 
permitted to ask your acceptance of the enclosed suggestion of 
the strenuous life in "Roosevelt as a Wood Chopper," which I 
send with best wishes for the new year, and for all your years. 
I am sorry that you are soon to remove from among us, for I feel 
that you have introduced a new note of sturdy interest and 
honesty, combined with great ability, into Pennsylvania's guber- 
natorial succession. 

Yours truly, 

J. Horace McFarland. 
To Gov. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 
Harrisburg, Pa. 



January 15th, 1907. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker. 

My dear Governor: In closing my ofl&cial work I take my 
pen for the last time to express my appreciation deeper than 
words can express, of your kind note. 

To have served under you, to have been chosen by you, and 
to have maintained to the end the position with which you hon- 
ored me are distinctions which I and my children will cherish 
above all other considerations of pride. 

God bless you, my dear Governor. I shall never know one 
like you. 

Ever affectionately yours, 

Hampton L. Carson. 



January 17th, 1907. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Schwenksville, Pa. 
My dear Governor: 

Judge Staake has just handed me a letter from you under 
date of January 7th, 1907, in which you give me credit for the 
inception of the idea of the congress for bringing about uniformity 
in the divorce laws of the country. I am glad to have the letter, 
and will treasure it. 

In this connection I will take the opportunity to send to you 
my most cordial greetings and congratulations upon the success- 
ful close of what must be regarded as one of the greatest adminis- 
trations of the great office of Governor of Pennsylvania that we 
have ever had. While you have been criticised for originating 
new ideas, as everyone must be who deviates from the beaten path 
460 



COMMENT AND REVIEW 

in public matters, no act of yours has ever been successfully 
assailed as being selfish or malicious, and no suggestion even of 
anything except the most absolute honesty of purpose has ever 
been made in regard to any of your personal or official acts. I 
know the affairs of Pennsylvania fairly well, — I could not help 
having this knowledge from my long connection with the state 
government. I have been a pretty thorough student of Penn- 
sylvania history, and I feel that I am entirely within the bounds 
of fact when I say that more has been accomplished in general 
progress in the line of great constructive improvement, as well 
as in the bettering of conditions of government, during your 
administration than in any two equal periods in the career of the 
commonwealth. A great deal of this has come from suggestions 
made by yourself, and much of the rest has been the result of the 
encouragement given by you to those whose ambitions for Penn- 
sylvania found a ready response in your co-operation. 

Now that you have retired from office you will find that 
those who have criticised some of the details of your work will 
give you credit for the great essential things which have been 
accomplished by you and your associates, and that the trifling 
matters which have been assailed will be forgotten in the general 
appreciation of the great progress that has been made under 
your leadership. 

And on the personal side you have made a legion of friends 
and won a host of admirers. To me it has been a great pleasure 
and privilege to have been associated with you and to have known 
you well, and I want to thank you for all the kindnesses you have 
shown me and to extend to you my hearty good wishes and the 
hope that your life will be contented and prosperous and that 
your lines may be cast in pleasant places. 

With kindest personal regards, and trusting that I may soon 
see you, I am, Very cordially your friend, 

Wm. C. Sproul. 



February 16th, 1907. 
My dear Gov. Pennypacker: 

I am just in receipt of your letter, and am going to still further 
trespass on your kindness. Mr. Hayden writes me that he has 
sent the Gazette file (with his library) to Mr. Henkels at 1112 Wal- 
nut Street, for sale. If it will not inconvenience you, will you, 
the next time you are in the city, visit Mr. Henkels' place and 
purchase the file for me, using your own judgment as to the 
price? If any error is made, I would rather it was on the side of 

461 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

liberality, as Mr. Hayden appears to be an enthusiastic collector, 
and I think he ought to receive good value for what he has 
gathered together. 

I note what you say about resuming practice in Philadelphia. 
If I can assist you in this or in any other way, I will surely do so. 
I hope, however, that our good old state will yet secure your 
services as one of their judges of its highest tribunal. That is 
where you ought to be. Very sincerely, your friend, 

George T. Oliver. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Pennypacker's Mills, Pa. 



1400 N. 13th St., Phila., 
February 22, 1907. 
Dear Governor: 

I read your contribution to the Public Ledger. It is a simple 
recital of a sincere man who performed his duty without a selfish 
motive or an ambitious desire. I know you abandoned a conge- 
nial environment with its material advantages, reluctantly, for an 
office, distinguished as it was, that had always brought trouble to 
its occupant. 

The two men who were primarily opposed to your candidacy 
were Quay and yourself. I speak whereof I know, but how 
many people believe it? 

For your tribute to pohticians, I thank you. How is it our 
independent friends cannot realize, that the average man in 
public affairs, is the same as the average man outside? 

I have been acquainted with every governor of Pennsylvania 
since 1860. I have had a reasonable intimacy with the political 
intrigues of their administration, and their achievements, and I 
say, challenging contradiction, that yours, for its exclusion of 
politics and for things done, stands out in bold relief compared 
with them all. May the world come to know you as some of 
your friends do. 

I sought for opportunities to call on you when in the city, 
but you had gone when the announcement of your arrival was 
printed. 

I have a few more years of work in me, and they are at your 
disposal when occasion requires. 

With highest regards. 

Your sincere friend, 

David H. Lane. 
Hon. Sam'l W. Pennypacker. 
462 



COMMENT AND REVIEW 

Greensburg, Pa., 

February 22d, 1907. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Schwenksville, Pa. 
My dear Governor: 

I have read with very great interest indeed your very 
able paper in Sunday's Ledger, reviewing the work of your 
administration. 

I am satisfied that your conduct of public affairs during the 
past four years will become historic for your accomplishment in 
constructive legislation, and that the people of the country will 
point to it with very great pride. 

Yours very truly, 

Cyrus E. Woods. 



February 27, 1907. 
My dear Governor Pennypacker: 

I am in receipt of the Ledger containing your recent article 
and I most heartily thank you for it. You have made a great 
record in a great office and I congratulate you upon it. I wish 
that all good may follow you. 

Charles W. Fairbanks. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Harrishurg, Pa. 



March 5, 1907. 
My dear Sir: 

I think I can honestly say that not a day goes around that I 
do not miss you as governor of this state. Your ears must often 
burn, as your admirers so frequently inform me that you are 
going down in history as one of the greatest governors of 
Pennsylvania. 

The present governor has taken me into his confidence and is 
determined upon learning the truth and doing all in his power to 
formulate a good administration for the people. It is, however, 
unfortunate, as you have already said, that the governor of this 
commonwealth should have all his duties thrown upon him at the 
time the legislature meets. 

With all I have upon me just now in fighting the anti- 
vaccinationists, in trying to impress those in power with the 

463 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

importance and comprehensiveness of the responsibilities that 
you have placed upon me, and looking after the work of this 
department that comes in each day, I feel depressed and only 
arouse from such depression when I get my morning mail and 
read such comforting congratulations from my friends, and men 
like yourself, who have an intelligent and comprehensive knowl- 
edge of the work I have before me. 

Thanking you for your encouragement and expressions of 
appreciation of my labors, I am, 

Yours faithfully, 

Samuel G. Dixon. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 

Schwenksville, Pa. 



May 27/07. 
Dear Governor: 

I was out of town last week and did not receive yours of 
May 22 till yesterday. If I could go through the files of the 
Public Ledger for the period of your administration, I am sure 
that I could find more than one editorial cordially recognizing 
and sustaining your views upon eminent domain. Certainly 
what you wrote on the subject left a strong impression upon me, 
and if I had had a volume of your messages at hand when I was 
writing the article you inclose, I should have strengthened it by a 
citation. When I read the article in print I felt that it should 
have included more distinct recognition of your attitude, but the 
reference to the subject there was only incidental, and could not 
be complete. What you say of checks upon corporations inter- 
ests me very much. The actual character or purpose of legisla- 
tion affecting corporations is so often obscure to the outside 
observer, as in the recent instances of trolley and electric power 
companies, that I doubt if any of us really appreciated at the 
time the consistency of your attitude. Would not this be a 
proper subject for present treatment? I should prize a paper 
from you on the line suggested by your note, or if you do not 
feel disposed to that, I shall hope when I have an opportunity of 
seeing you, to get the material from you for a review of what I 
have always recognized as one of the strongest of the many very 
strong features of your administration. 

Believe me, dear Governor, 

Very sincerely yours, 

Alfred C. Lambdin. 
464 



COMMENT AND REVIEW 

Washington, D. C, 
November 22, 1907. 
My dear Governor: 

I thank you for the poem on Greater Pittsburgh. When the 
truth of history is known, you will be honored as the real father 
of the Greater Pittsburgh, for if it had not been for your own great 
wisdom, backed by your personal courage, there would have been 
no extra session of the legislature, and if it had not been for your 
state pride in desiring to see a greater city at the western end of 
the state, the legislation under which the Greater Pittsburgh has 
now come into existence would not have been included in the 
program. 

I felicitate you upon the result. 

Very sincerely yours, 

P. C. Knox. 
Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, 
Schwenksville, Pa. 



Philadelphia, March 8, 1907. 
My dear Governor: 

Accept my thanks for your review of your administration. 
It will stand the test of time and when the newspapers get over 
their wounded vanity at being told they are not always the incar- 
nation of wisdom and greatness, they will acknowledge it. 

Yours sincerely, 

James T. Mitchell. 



Columbia, Pa., Nov. 28, 1907. 
Dear Governor Pennypacker: 

I see that I shall have to make this a very personal and 
familiar letter, and beg you to pardon it. 

It was with a sense of genuine pleasure that I read your 
kindest of letters of Nov. 26, informing me that The Historical 
Society of Pennsylvania would invite me to be their guest at a 
reception to be given me at some time in the near future which 
might suit my convenience; and telling me also that, the idea 
having originated with you, you yourself would arrange for my 
comfort, would make my reception a success, and would, so to 
say, brush away the possible thorns in the path, and metaphor- 
ically strew it with laurel and roses. . . . Now, my dear Gover- 
nor, nothing in the world could be kinder, more generous or more 
delicately enticing; but one consideration has been overlooked, a 
vital one, and that is the state of my health. 

30 465 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

This it is that prevents me from subjecting myself to any 
undue excitement, and which has for some years caused me to 
absent myself from all public functions. The recital of our ail- 
ments is tedious, but you will pardon me for touching upon mine 
that I may justify what would otherwise seem ungratefulness. 

Some years ago, after a too prolonged siege of visiting, I was 
suddenly stricken with heart failure, neurasthenia, and all its ills 
following, and for some years thereafter my life was despaired of, 
attacks of heart failure making it seem that the end might come 
at any time. All exciting causes were avoided. And out of con- 
sideration for my delicate health, Franklin and Marshall did me 
the honor to give me Litt.D. in absentio. Only last year I had an 
invitation from a professor at Yale who was authorized to speak 
for the faculty in inviting me to talk to one of the classes upon 
poetry, quite informally, if I wished, they were good enough to 
say — yet I knew I should not be able to go through the ordeal 
and had to give up the alluring idea. 

Indeed, I could no more undertake to undergo a reception 
(you can see I unconsciously use the word "undergo" as if one 
expected a surgeon's operation) than I could climb Pike's Peak, 
for each might prove fatal to the weak heart. 

I have been told that my mother was one of the most frail of 
women, and that it was not unusual for her to faint day after day, 
and I often think that some of my lack of robustness comes to me 
from her, but then one loves to inherit even a defect from his 
mother. 

It is the strain that does the injury, and nothing can eliminate 
the strain. By avoiding events which might be injurious I have 
been enabled to do a little work, such as it is, now and then, and 
to remain among the living. 

You surely do not wish to exterminate me! And yet a recep- 
tion might do it. Such things have happened. A live poet at a 
reception might pass muster, but I ask you, my dear Governor, 
what you would do with a collapsed poet? 

I fear the strain, and so do my doctors, and under the cir- 
cumstances I feel that you will surely understand my inability 
to be present, much as I should enjoy the honor which would 
accrue. 

It is so unhandsome in one to refuse such a distinction and 
such proffers of wide hospitality, for I am conscious that there 
would be assembled many men eminent in literature, law and the 
liberal arts and sciences, that I feel oppressed by my own inability 
to accept your kind invitation. But I beg you will at least believe 
466 



COMMENT AND REVIEW 

me sincere in my profound thanks, and that with the highest 
appreciation of all your intended kindness, I hope I may submit, 
without offense, how impossible it is for me to accept the honors 
which you propose and which you and others so bountifully mean 
to shower upon me. 

I am, dear Governor, I assure you, under a mountain of obli- 
gation, and remain, 

Most sincerely yours, 

Lloyd Mifflin. 

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. 



December 25, 1911. 
Hon. Samuel W. Penny packer, 

Philadelphia, Pa. 
My dear Governor: 

Of course I do not expect that you remember me, but I had 
the pleasure of meeting you here and at Harrisburg. 

It seems to be that a public official who has served the com- 
monwealth wisely and conscientiously as you have, must feel a 
rankling and resentment at the unjust ridicule and criticism that 
has been your share to suffer. 

The late Judge Searle of Montrose told me the last time I 
ever saw him alive that in fifty years Pennypacker would be 
regarded as the greatest of our governors. 

I am not asking for anything, not even a reply, but think it 
more fitting, at this season, to express to you my appreciation 
of your services as an official and citizen, than to eulogize you 
after your death. 

Sincerely, 

Edward B. Farr. 



467 



CHAPTER XV 

Miniatures 

Joseph G. Cannon 

IT has been my fortune to meet with ''Uncle Joe," as it 
is the custom to call him, the autocrat of the House of 
Representatives, upon two occasions. In 1905 I was a 
delegate to the Republican National Convention which 
met in Chicago and nominated Roosevelt and Fairbanks for 
the presidency and vice presidency. ''Uncle Joe" presided 
over the convention. There were 30,000 people within 
the vast building; very few of the speakers could make 
themselves heard and there was more or less of bustle and 
disorder. 

From the platform, a long and narrow boardwalk was 
extended out into the midst of the vast assemblage, from the 
far end of which the speeches were made. Failing to secure 
silence by ordinary appeals, "Uncle Joe" got down on his 
hands and knees and pounded with his gavel on these boards. 
The attitude caused a laugh, attention was attracted to him 
and away from the buzz of conversation and the maneuver 
succeeded. I made a speech nominating Fairbanks. Elihu 
Root and Chauncey M. Depew had spoken and when "Uncle 
Joe" introduced me he did it with a reference to "three of a 
kind, " which no doubt called up familiar associations in the 
minds of some who were present. 

I met him again in the summer of 1909. The Honorable 
I. P. Wanger brought him to Norristown, where he had a 
reception and made an address at the court house. We then 
went in automobiles over the camp ground at Valley Forge, 
and then to the King of Prussia Inn. As it happened. Jack 
O'Brien, the noted pugilist, was at the inn preparing for 
468 



MINIATURES 

a coming bout. He was an agreeable fellow, but had an 
unhealthy look, and my anticipation that he would be beaten 
in the coming contest was verified by the result. 

''Uncle Joe" and O'Brien took off their coats and, with 
raised fists, faced each other in front of the inn, and in this 
attitude were photographed. From there we went to the 
Merion Cricket Club at Haverford, where we lunched with 
a large party of ladies and gentlemen, and some of us made 
speeches. He spoke sensibly and with a certain persuasive- 
ness. A tall, gaunt, grizzled and homely man, with a fund 
of anecdote from the prairies and with rugged bluntness of 
phrase, he gives the impression of possessing character and 
resolution. At this luncheon, being one of those who 
appreciate his public life and services, I had a personal and, 
in a sense, a confidential chat with him. He made it plain 
to me that he thought Roosevelt, in his disturbance of all 
existing interests and conditions and his use of the power of 
the presidency to advan'ce his friends and control the 
succession, had done much harm. 

It is the fate of every old lion when his teeth begin 
to loosen and his legs to stiffen to fall a prey to the jackals 
who howl and hunt in packs. Even now, as this is written, 
March 19, 1910, the jackals are gathering around "Uncle 
Joe" with the chances that his work is over. 



Taft 

Monday, February 22, 1909, at the dinner of the alumni 
of the University of Pennsylvania, I sat through the evening 
alongside of the Honorable William H. Taft, and made this 
memorandum the next morning. He said to me : 

''You were about to say something to me this morning 
when we met at the Academy of Music and were inter- 
rupted?" 

"Oh, I was only about to express my surprise at your 

469 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

calling me by name. We only met once before and then but 
for a few minutes." 

"I have a pretty good memory for faces, but that is not 
it — you have a face that lingers. Besides, we have met 
more than once. Perhaps we were not introduced, but I 
have seen you at functions." 

"How do you like it," I inquired, "up to the present 
time? You were thrown out on the stump, making speeches, 
rubbing up against all kinds of people, many of them 
anxious to commit you upon subjects of interest to them. 
It must have been a great experience." 

"I rather enjoyed it. I made 402 speeches. Bryan 
made over eight hundred, but then, as some one said to me, 
he is an exception which don't count and is all throat. I 
wrote out at the beginning of the campaign a letter of 
acceptance in which I expressed my views on all the issues. 
In my speeches I confined myself to it, and you know while 
you may use different language it is practically a repetition 
of the same thought in all of them." 

Dr. S. Weir Mitchell sat on my right. Mr. Taft on my 
left. Presently Mr. Taft turned to me and abruptly asked: 

"What sort of a mayor is Mr. Reyburn making?" 

Mr. Reyburn was a few seats to our left, and in the 
course of the evening was unfortunate in an effort to secure 
an interview. I answered : 

"Dr. Mitchell only a few minutes ago said to me that 
he is an unlimited idiot. I do not agree with Dr. Mitchell 
in this conclusion. You know Mitchell is a little decided 
in his views. I think Mr. Reyburn is a good mayor, doing 
all he can for the benefit of the city. In Philadelphia the 
lines are drawn pretty closely. I mean the social lines. 
Mr. Reyburn has not the correct social brand." 

"It amused me," said he, "to hear that Mrs. Reyburn 
feels that her husband is like the Lord Mayor of London 
and ought to take the lead in all functions." 

"She not only so feels, but she shows a disposition to 
470 



MINIATURES 

enforce what she thinks to be a right. There is much in 
the relation of all sorts of people which may afford amuse- 
ment to a mind of philosophical tendency." Thereupon he 
gave a hearty laugh. 

''You must be a very good-natured fellow," I ven- 
tured, "to have got along so comfortably with Mr. 
Roosevelt." 

"Roosevelt," he replied, "is impulsive, but he has as 
little pride of opinion as any man I have ever known. In 
all matters in my department, when the reasons were 
explained to him, he was satisfied. He sees through a 
problem, too, very quickly. He is mentally alert." 

"What do you think of your Supreme Court?" he 
inquired. 

"It is in good shape, " I answered. "The Chief Justice, 
Mitchell, is an exceptionally able lawyer — and there are 
other strong men on the Bench." 

"Do you know Hay Brown?" he asked. 

"Yes, I know him." 

"Do you know John Elkin?" 

"Yes, and he is making a good judge, better than you 
might have supposed. As you know, he was a politician and 
had many associations other than legal. But he is doing 
well." 

"I knew Judge Joseph P. Bradley of the U. S. Supreme 
Court," he said. "He had intended to resign, but he died 
on the Bench. He had his own antipathies. He came to 
me when I was solicitor general and said : ' If you have any 
respect whatever for my wishes in the matter, you will see 
to it that that man Paxson of Pennsylvania is not appointed 
my successor. I never have a pain in the finger that he 
does not hurry down to Washington and send up his card, 
inquiring for my health.' " Thereupon I laughed. 

"Paxson," I said, "was a man of strong common sense, 
but lacking in tone. He grew rich." 

"How did he make it?" 

471 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

''He was executor for David Jayne and, thereafter, was 
thrifty and saving." 

"I suppose he had good information as to investments," 
he added with a twinkle. 

"I am not one of those," said I, ''who believe that the 
PhiHppines ought to be surrendered. Nations as well as 
men have to meet their fate. We have them and ought to 
take care of them." 

"That is my opinion," said he, decidedly, "and I shall 
do all I can to have the Panama Canal finished while I am 
President. The resolution of Congress at the outset of 
the Spanish War announcing a policy as to Cuba in the 
event of success was a great blunder." 

This is one of my own pet views and I strongly assented, 
adding: "Mr. McKinley ought never to have tied himself 
up with his proclamation." 

"I see by the newspapers, "said I, "that you are going 
to appoint Senator Knox Secretary of State. If it be true, 
I am much pleased. Now do not tell me anything." 

"I am going to appoint him," he replied with emphasis. 
"You know him well?" 

"Quite well; I appointed him to the Senate." 

"So you did." 

"You may be able to do something with those people in 
the South. Their interests are sure to get away with their 
prejudices, and it may come in your administration," I 
suggested. 

"I hope it does," and turning to Budd, who is a Demo- 
crat, he added, "Democracy is nothing but a memory." 

He impressed me as being sane, vigorous and good- 
hearted, and I feel assured that his administration will 
be successful. 



Mary Garden 
On Saturday evening, March 12, 1910, Mrs. Pennypacker 
and myself, as the guests of Mr. Shelly, occupied a pro- 
472 



MINIATURES 

scenium box at Hammerstein's Opera House at Broad and 
Poplar Streets in Philadelphia, and heard Mary Garden in 
the opera Louise. She is an artist both in the use of her 
voice and in the histrionic part of the performance, showing 
power as well as skill. We were taken behind the scenes and 
introduced to her. A large woman, with great vital force, 
she is thoroughly feminine and has those physical character- 
istics which prove so attractive to men. In the brief inter- 
view she showed that mental alertness which enabled her to 
do and say what the situation seemed to require. She 
greeted me with: 

"Governor, I am pleased to see you. This is a most 
distinguished honor," and she extended her hand and 
laughed cheerily. 

''We have been following your fortunes through the 
evening with the greatest interest," I interjected. 

'T hope you have not been shocked?" she inquired. 

''There was no possibility of our being shocked; we were 
only absorbed." 

She had been arranging for the next scene and had 
placed in her bosom six or eight red roses. She drew my 
attention to them. 

"Don't you think. Governor, that I have too many of 
these for proper effect? " 

I could not accept the intimation without the possi- 
bility of mistake and, therefore, without indelicacy. 

"I think. Miss Garden, that as you are, you are 
perfect." 

She plucked one of the roses from the bunch and 
said: 

"There, take it. It is artificial, but then it will last the 
longer." 

"I shall see to it, since you have been so generous, that 
it lasts a long time." 

As a cover she gave another to Mr. Shelly. Then she 
turned suddenly, clutched it away from him, and said : 

473 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

"No, you shan't have it. I will give it to Mrs. Penny- 
packer. 

Then she was called to the stage. 



Roosevelt 

It has been my fortune to be brought into relations 
with the President in various ways and to have had at 
different times personal intercourse with him. A contem- 
poraneous estimate of one who has filled so conspicuous a 
r61e, by any observer, may possess some value. My young- 
est brother, James L. Pennypacker, went to Harvard Uni- 
versity. Roosevelt was in the same class and in some of the 
same societies and when my brother became an editor of the 
Harvard Advocate, Albert Bushnell Hart and he urged Roose- 
velt for the staff and succeeded in having him elected. 
They had their photographs taken together. Consequently, 
I began to hear of Roosevelt in his days at college. He has 
frequently spoken to me of my brother as "my Penny- 
packer." What I heard of him was that he was not regarded 
among his associates as in any way remarkable save for 
earnestness of purpose and promptness of movement, though 
the fact that my brother, through most of the bizarre 
fortunes of the President, has been steadfast in his loyalty, 
speaks well for the impression he made. In the Hayes 
campaign the students marched in a parade through Bos- 
ton. They were never on very good terms with the towns- 
people, and from the roof of a tall building potatoes and 
refuse, it may be some stones, were thrown at them. Roose- 
velt, excited and angry, suggested at once that they burn 
down the building. 

A few years later, after Mr. Roosevelt began to appear 
in New York poHtics, occurred the contest between Mr. 
Blaine and Mr. Cleveland for the presidency. At that time 
I was secretary of the Philadelphia Civil Service Reform 
Association. The Independents in Pennsylvania favored 
Mr. Blaine, and when George William Curtis attempted to 
474 



MINIATURES 

throw the weight of the Civil Service Reform Association on 
the side of Cleveland, I answered him in a letter circulated 
over the country. Roosevelt was also in favor of Blaine and 
we had some correspondence which are still among my 
letters. 

We touched again later in a more important way, though 
he probably never knew of the fact. 

In the Philadelphia National Convention of 1900 there 
was a struggle for the mastery between Mr. Hanna, sup- 
ported by the national administration, upon the one hand, 
and Mr. Quay and Mr. Piatt, on the other. Hanna had 
selected a candidate for the vice presidency. It is a fact 
well-known in Pennsylvania public life that Mr. Quay not 
only had a fondness for me, but he had confidence in my 
judgment. I told him at that time that the man for the 
occasion was Roosevelt, and I have ever felt since that I was 
a factor in this fateful turn in the fortunes of the President. 
At all events, Quay and Piatt had him nominated and balked 
Hanna. When McKinley died and Roosevelt became the 
President, my feehng toward him was one of enthusiastic 
and hopeful approval, due, no doubt, largely to a sense of 
some personal association and to the fact that I was pleased 
to see a man of Dutch descent reach a station so exalted. 
I gave expression to this feeling to Mr. Quay. The only 
comment of that wise observer of men was: 

"I hope he will be discreet." 

In the fall of 1903 the provost of the University of 
Pennsylvania came to me to ask me to secure the presence 
of Mr. Roosevelt at the Academy of Music on the following 
22d of February to deliver the annual address before that 
institution of learning. At the time I was very much 
occupied with the affairs of the commonwealth, but the 
welfare of the University ever appealed to me and I promised 
to make the effort. Mr. Quay, upon whom Mr. Roosevelt 
then much depended, arranged for an interview. On the 
day appointed, I went to Washington and Mr. Quay took 

475 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

me in his carriage to the White House. I presented the 
matter to the President and he, in reply, said, with a 
laugh : 

''Mr. Quay has given directions that I am not to make 
any address upon any subject until after the election next 
fall, and here he is supporting you in an effort to get me 
to go to Philadelphia." 

Mr. Quay assented to the truth of the charge. Then 
the President, in more serious mood, gave me reasons why, 
in anticipation of the poUtical campaign, he did not feel he 
could accept, but in effect promised me that the following 
year, if desired, he would make the address. I thanked him 
and told him that would be eminently satisfactory, and the 
succeeding February 22d he kept the engagement. 

He invited us to return to lunch with him. At the 
White House for luncheon were Mrs. Roosevelt and another 
lady or two, two or three senators, and as many newspaper 
editors from New York. The President came in from a 
horseback ride in his riding suit. He began to talk when he 
entered the outer door. He talked all the time on the way 
to the table and he talked all the time throughout the 
luncheon. Hardly an observation was made by any one 
else at the table, and, in fact, it would only have been 
possible by the exercise of a sort of brutal force. The 
subject which he discussed was Italian literature, with which 
he did not appear to me to be very familiar. Every once in 
a while he turned to Mr. Quay, who sat on his right, and put 
some question to him as to an authority, but he seldom 
waited for an answer. The strongest impression made on 
me was that of mental excitement, of a man laboring under 
a serious nervous strain, and if I could have given him advice 
it would have been to sit down quietly somewhere and rest. 
I feared a break-down before the end of his term. 

When Mr. Roosevelt delivered his address, I, as a trustee 
of the University, was present on the platform. While 
being introduced to the trustees and others in the waiting 
476 



MINIATURES 

room, he plunged at Dr. Weir Mitchell, shook him fiercely 
and ejaculated: 

"I have just been reading one of your books, " and gave 
a quotation. 

"That is the third time he has told me that story," 
grumbled Mitchell, as he came away, ''and I never wrote 
anything of the kind in my life." 

The address was unimportant in itself, but his coming 
showed kindness and was much appreciated. 

I likewise sat on the platform and heard him make his 
address July 4, 1902, at Pittsburgh, noticing his habit of 
snapping off his words as though trying to bite through 
them with his teeth (perhaps this is what happened to 
"thru") and heard another, later, before the Masons at 
Masonic Temple in Philadelphia. On the latter occasion he 
attracted much attention by coming at me, with both fists 
closed, glaring at me with assumed savagery, striking me 
on the chest with force enough to upset a light man, and 
shouting : 

"Nothing like a double Dutchman, nothing like a double 
Dutchman!" 

On Decoration Day of 1905, which was the first time Mr. 
Roosevelt had ever been at Gettysburg, I rode in a barouche 
with him, Mrs. Roosevelt and Ethel, over the grounds. 
Ethel was then a sweet, attractive little girl of about eleven 
years of age, and I tried to entertain her. She afterward 
wrote me a pretty little note which will be found among my 
papers. He asked me whether I had ever seen any military 
service and I told him that I had carried a musket for a 
brief period, and that it had been my fate to be in the first 
force to meet the rebels at Gettysburg. This aroused his 
keen interest and opened the way for me to tell him of the 
unequaled contribution of our family to that war, it having 
furnished two major generals, five colonels and in all one 
hundred and forty-eight men. "It is wonderful," he said. 
Afterward I heard of his repeating the tale over the country. 

477 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

At a reception in Cambridge, Massachusetts, two years 
later, at which my sister-in-law was present, he shouted 
across the room: 

"I know something about the Pennypackers that you 
don't know. They sent one hundred and forty-eight men 
into the war." 

The cards, invitations, programmes and photographs 
relating to his inauguration and my participation in it will 
be found among my papers. 

At the inauguration ball in the evening it pleased me 
that Mrs. Roosevelt did not need an introduction and to 
hear her say to Mrs. Pennypacker, "Your husband was so 
good to my little girl." 

In the spring of 1906, a large delegation of state senators 
and representatives, on behalf of the state, went with me to 
Washington to invite the President to deliver the oration at 
the dedication of the state capitol the ensuing autunm. 
Senators Penrose and Knox accompanied us. To me was 
left the burden of making the persuading speech. I had 
written a formal letter of invitation suggesting that we would 
make every effort to accommodate ourselves to his wishes 
and would let him designate the day. He accepted and 
selected the fourth day of October, which happened to be 
the anniversary of the reunion in 1877 of the Pennypacker 
family at Pennypacker's Mills. After he had received us 
and heard me he dismissed the delegation and asked Penrose 
and Knox and myself to come into his private room in the 
annex to the White House, as there was a matter of import- 
ance about which he wanted to talk to us. Closing the 
doors, he turned to me and said in effect that he had informa- 
tion from reliable sources that there was going to be another 
great coal strike in the course of the coming summer, that 
he gave me warning in advance, so that I might be prepared, 
and that he would like me to enter into communication with 
him on the first appearance of difficulty. At that moment 
he and I set our faces in different directions. It was in 
478 



MINIATURES 

effect an announcement to me that in the event of differences 
between the coal operators and the coal miners in Pennsyl- 
vania he intended to take charge of the matter as he had 
done before. I had always regarded the appointment of the 
coal commission not only as a stretch of the authority of 
the national executive, but also as an interference with 
the sovereignty of the state and an unjustifiable assumption 
of a duty which pertained to that sovereignty alone. I 
listened in silence, with the inward determination that in the 
event of the emergency he had forecasted he should have 
nothing whatever to do with its settlement, unless the 
resources of the state proved inadequate. In a preceding 
chapter I have given my letters to President George F. Baer 
of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company and to 
John Mitchell, head of the labor organization, my proclama- 
tion to the people of the state, and have narrated the use of 
the state constabulary and the steps taken which led to 
the settlement of the coal strike by the authorities of 
Pennsylvania. I had, however, touched Mr. Roosevelt in 
his most sensitive nerve and I have always felt that he did 
not forgive me. 

On the 4th of October, 1906, I rode through the streets 
of Harrisburg with him in a barouche in which was also the 
mayor of that city. He was on his feet nearly the whole 
time almost throwing himself out of the carriage in energetic 
recognitions of the vociferous shouting and cheers of the 
crowd. The mayor found a chance, with some difficulty, 
to express a most earnest hope that Mr. Roosevelt would 
permit the people again to elect him to the presidency. I 
was perhaps called upon by the situation to concur in this 
maladroit compliment, but refrained. The President 
naturally made no response. As he threw himself to right 
and left, I said: 'T do not know what to make of you," to 
which he in like manner made no response. To some 
comment of mine upon the responsibilities and powers of 
the President, he took time to say: "It is a great office." 

479 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

The newspapers in their efforts to find some defect about 
the capitol had been making much to-do about some little 
heads on the main doors. As he entered the building he 
said with a manifest effort to be generally heard: "These 
are the finest bronze doors I have ever seen," for which I 
was duly grateful. He ran over the building, commenting 
favorably upon all he saw. It was raining heavily. To the 
suggestion that we have the ceremonies inside he said : "No, 
we will speak from the platform." While I was making the 
dedicatory address some one in the crowd called aloud. 
Mr. Roosevelt caught me by the coat and said, "Don't 
answer him, don't answer him." His address was pronounced 
in its views. He commended highly the special session of 
the legislature and its work. He attacked the courts. He 
advocated a concentration of power in the National Govern- 
ment, citing James Wilson. He picked out an old soldier 
in front of him and made the veteran wild with pleasure by 
personal references. He met Mrs. Pennypacker and asked 
for the number of her children. He signed the proof notes 
of his address while on the platform and gave them to me. 

He lunched at the mansion. He asked for "My Penny- 
packer" and I had my brother come to the table beside 
him. 

He had promised to speak in York and was hurried away 
to the train shouting and gesticulating. I have not seen 
him since. 

I began with much admiration for him and at the close 
of his administration it does not meet the approval of my 
judgment. There has been too much commotion and too 
little result. There has been too much appeal to the 
unthinking crowd, too much denunciation, too much of the 
outre. I do not understand why, as a Dutchman, he had no 
word of sympathy for the Boers fighting for their land and 
permitted the United States to be used by their enemies. 
I do not understand why he should emphasize his gratitude 
to Pennsylvania, when she gave him the largest majority any 
480 



MINIATURES 

President ever received in a state, and then see to it that 
she had no cabinet position, no place in the Supreme Court, 
and no minister abroad by his appointment. I do not under- 
stand the condemnation of postmasters for political activity 
and throwing the whole power of the presidency into the 
nomination and election of his successor. I do not like 
publicly attacking the meat trade and at the same time 
permitting it to use benzoate of soda. I cannot reconcile 
zeal for civil service reform with putting a doctor chum at 
the head of the army, and turning out a worthy incumbent 
in order to find a place for his private secretary as collector 
of the port of New York. His assaults upon congress and 
the courts do not accord with a due appreciation of and 
regard for our system of government. And yet he has been 
a most vigorous personality and it may be has been of some 
benefit to our life. I am inclined to think that the solution 
of his inconsistencies lies in the fact that he is a man of 
strong impulses, with good inclinations and not of a high 
order of intelligence. Whether he is to be put in the class 
with Richard Coeur de Lion and Henri Quatre or in that 
other class with Mahomet and John Law, I do not pretend 
to decide. 



"Connie Mack" 

After Governor Tener had accepted the presidency of 
the League of Base Ball Clubs, the Pen and Pencil Club 
gave him a dinner. At this dinner I met "Connie Mack," 
the man who has been heard of everywhere because under 
his management the Athletic Club won the championships 
through a series of years. His real name is Cornelius 
McGillicuddy. He made a speech about what he had done 
and hoped to do which was apt and pleasing. He is a dark- 
eyed and fleshless man, about five feet ten inches in 
height, and through the drawn lines of his rather hard face 
a smile of good nature continually makes its way. 

31 481 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Charles E. Hughes 

The University of Pennsylvania for many years has 
celebrated the 22d of February, holding exercises in the 
American Academy of Music, where some man of wide 
reputation makes an address to the assembled classes and 
invited public. These demonstrations are regarded as of 
more than ordinary importance and seats are much in 
demand, and requests for them often end in disappointment. 
Of the Presidents, McKinley, Roosevelt and Taft have made 
addresses upon these occasions. Upon that date in 1910 
Charles E. Hughes, then governor of New York, dehvered 
the oration and received the degree of Doctor of Laws. I 
was introduced to him in the foyer of the Academy, where 
the trustees assembled and from which they marched in 
procession to the stage. 

"Everybody knows Governor Pennypacker, " was his 
response. 

With heavy black whiskers around his face, with more 
hair there than on his head, with very much the manner 
of a grocer selling sugar over a counter, he gave the 
impression of one whose cultivation had very recently begun. 
The color of the skin, the timbre of the voice and the physical 
composure, showing no disturbance of nerve, all indicated 
good health and satisfactory nutrition. His address was 
delivered with sonorous tones that could be easily heard 
over the house, and he pleased his audience, who gave him 
hearty applause. In matter it was commonplace in the 
extreme, giving no evidence either of learning, acuteness of 
thought or grasp of his subject. In the main it was an 
effort to convince his hearers that men in public and private 
life ought to be virtuous in order to reap a due reward of 
happiness, accompanied with the suggestion that there are 
officials, not himself, who fail to pursue this course and 
deserve retribution. 

At the dinner given in the evening by the alumni, I 
was the toastmaster, and I inquired of James M. Beck, the 
482 



MINIATURES 

bland orator and successful lawyer, who sat at my side, 
whether it would be safe to poke a little fun at Hughes or 
whether he was so stiff and narrow as to fail to understand 
it. "You will be entirely safe," said Beck, who further 
gave me his judgment that the governor was really a very 
worthy man, with high motives. I introduced him as a man 
who had made a reputation over the country by trying to do 
in New York what we had accomplished in Pennsylvania, 
and some other chaff of like character, and he bore it with 
great equanimity, and made a good speech. 

In the course of this speech he said he "had improved 
by degrees," referring to his recent doctorate. I intro- 
duced to him a number of persons, among them a preacher 
who took that inopportune time to urge upon him a new 
edition of the testament, and he still behaved with good 
nature and self-restraint. 



Quay 

John Scott, a most worthy Philadelphia lawyer, son of 
United States Senator John Scott, told me, November 10, 
1910, the following facts: 

He goes to the Canadian woods every summer. There 
he has an Indian guide of whom he is very fond, named 
Louis Gill, of the tribe of Abenakies. One day this Indian 
said to Scott: 

"Do you know Senator Cu-ay?" 

"Yes, I know Senator Quay." 

"He is one of our tribe," the Indian affirmed with a 
glad smile. 

"Does he take any interest in your affairs?" asked 
Scott. 

"Yes," replied Gill, "when our Catholic Church burned 
down we wrote to him and he sent us $5,000. He is a good 
man." 

January 5, 1914, F. W. Fleitz, deputy attorney general 

483 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

(with John P. Elkin) under three state administrations, 
entertained a few of us at the Harrisburg Club, with his 
recollections of Senator Quay. He said: 

"Quay was the most wonderful man I have ever known. 
He understood men thoroughly. He never gave orders. 
He had no regard for money save as a means to an end. 
There were times in his life when he was penniless. He was 
entirely without vanity. He had certain veins of supersti- 
tion. Once in Florida a rattlesnake crept out from a hole. 
I threw a stone at it. He checked me and told me never to 
strike a snake. Then he explained to me that once a long 
while ago the Seminoles and the rattlesnakes, after long 
hostilities, made a treaty of peace. No Seminole will ever 
strike a rattlesnake, and no snake since has bitten a Seminole. 
'I never strike a snake, ' said he, 'and don't you do it.' 

*'In the sununer of 1895, I tried to prevail on him not 
to begin his struggle with Governor Hastings. I pointed 
out to him that he was firm in his seat in the senate for 
several years, that Hastings' strength would wane as his 
term neared its end, that the mayors of Philadelphia and 
Pittsburgh, and the corporations at that time were hostile. 
He said to me: 'There is no fault in your reasoning, but 
I must make the fight. I often discard my reason and 
follow my intuitions.' 

''He took me down to St. Lucie in Florida with him 
several times. There he entertained the Earl of Newcastle 
and his brother. Lord Hope. He was an admirable host. 
While there was never any ostentatious show of attention, 
he always quietly saw to it that his guest had the best boat, 
and the best fishing tackle, and the pleasant seat. On one 
occasion, while we were fishing together at Atlantic City, a 
man of some distinction asked to go along. ' Are you a good 
sailor? It is apt to be rough out there, and when we are 
once anchored, we have to stay, ' the Senator quietly sug- 
gested. The man came in a white shirt, and after the boat 
had been fixed about seven miles out, Ben Sooy went back 
484 



MINIATURES 

to the shore. Ere long the man with the white shirt lay on 
the broad of his back in the bottom of the boat, retching and 
gasping, while the fish were being thrown all over him. 
'Damn him/ said the Senator, 'he ought to have had sense 
enough not to come out here.' 

''On another occasion, at Atlantic City, he said to Sooy: 
'Ben, I will give you ten dollars if you will jump into the 
sea.' In an instant Sooy was overboard. We threw him a 
rope. The Senator drew a knife and said: 'Ben, give up 
those ten dollars, and I will not cut this rope.' ' I will swim 
to China for ten dollars, ' said Sooy. All laughed and drew 
him in. 

"Another time we were fishing in Florida. The large, 
powerful fish (tarpon) had to be exhausted before being 
taken into the boat. We had lost several from the hnes 
while playing with them. The Senator said: 'I intend to 
draw the next fish straight to the boat, ' and he did. It was 
a dangerous proceeding. When it came near, the Senator 
called : ' Ben, gaff that fish. ' Sooy struck it and in an instant 
the harpoon and fish were up in the air, and Sooy was battling 
with the waves. We helped him into the boat whereupon, 
disgusted, he shouted : ' If any damn fool wants another fish 
harpooned, he may do it himself.' 

(Turning to me.) "He was very fond of you and proud 
of what you accomplished. I was at a hotel in Washington 
one evening with Quay, Penrose, Durham, Larry l^yre and 
John P. Elkin, and we had been discussing for several hours 
Pennsylvania affairs. All of them, except Eyre and myself, 
retired to an inner room. It had been assumed everywhere 
that Elkin was to be the nominee for the governorship, and 
everything looked favorable. When they came out Quay 
had been drinking some, and I ordered a carriage and went 
home with him. On the way he was silent, but finally said 
to me: 'The old man is not dead yet, Fleitz, you stick to 
me, and you will come out all right.' He repeated the words. 
I knew that something had occurred in the room, and 

485 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

feared for Elkin. A few weeks later he sent word to Elkin 
to come to St. Lucie, and there told him he could not be 
the nominee for governor. 

"I have often seen him drink. I never saw him so under 
the influence of liquor that it affected either his head or 
his walk. He had a peculiar way of drinking. During a 
campaign — perhaps for a year — ^he would not touch a drop. 
He had absolute self-control. He would pour out the hquor 
for his guests, and sit among them, his own glass empty. 
After the campaign was over he would go away and drink, 
I always thought to get rid of the nervous anxiety." 



Wu Ting Fang 

This bright Chinaman, when minister from his country 
to the United States, made a very agreeable impression upon 
Americans. He had much of the American trend of thought 
and was keen as a briar. When the University of Pennsyl- 
vania dedicated its law building, he was present. A baronet 
named Rowe had been sent to represent the University 
of Oxford and he made an address at the Academy of Music. 
A poorer speaker never appeared in public. He had no 
voice and no manner. He read from a manuscript and his 
sight was defective. He turned his back to the audience 
and rapidly emptied the hall. Wu leaned over to me and 
whispered : 

''I wish he would shut up." 

Again with an air of relief from weariness, he said: 

*'I did see your wife today. I did make a joke at her. 
I told her she could pack pennies." 



General Samuel Pearson 

I had an interview today, February 17, 1911, with 
General Samuel Pearson of the Boer Army, a short, thick- 
set man, rugged and brown in complexion, with an earnest 
486 



MINIATURES 

and emotional manner and rapidity of utterance, which 
reminded me much of Mr, Roosevelt, and I am sure that in 
temperament they are quite alike. When carried along with 
a rapid flow of words, and with the blood flowing to his 
head, he occasionally lost control of the nerves of speech 
and stammered. He was born in the Transvaal. His 
people, on the side of his father, came from Denmark, and 
on the side of his mother, from Holland. Kruger, to whom 
he says he was opposed, and who, in his opinion, was a most 
remarkable personage, sent him with a message to Mr. 
Roosevelt, at that time President of the United States. 
He took with him a letter of introduction from Robert 
Roosevelt of New York, the uncle of the President. The 
President greeted him with: 

"What can I do for you?" 

"There is nothing you can do for me personally. Mr. 
Kruger has sent me to see whether something cannot be 
done to prevent the English from getting horses in America. 
If they cannot get horses here they cannot win in the war. 
Mr. McKinley issued a proclamation on neutrality; this is 
not being neutral. It is aiding one side in the war, and that 
side an empire against a democracy." 

"That question has been settled," said the President. 
"It was decided by the judge in Louisiana." 

"What the judge in Louisiana decided was that he had 
no right to interfere and that if there was to be interference 
it must come from the government of the United States. 
It is, therefore, a matter for you." 

"It is all settled," was the reply. "Your people ought 
to stop fighting. They ought to surrender." 

This statement angered the general, and he said: 

"I did not come here to ask your advice about military 
matters and I do not think you are competent to give it. 
General Louis Botha is the man to say whether or not the 
cause ought to be surrendered." 

"I shall not interfere," said the President. 

487 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

"I will compel you to take some action," replied the 
general, who says that Mrs. Van Rensselaer, who wrote a 
history of New York, told him that the Roosevelts were not 
Dutchmen but Jews. He then went to Louisiana with the 
determination of gathering a lot of men together and killing 
the Englishmen there buying and shipping horses. There 
were about a hundred and fifty of them. He was persuaded 
to the contrary by the judge and by the fact that he was 
entirely without money to defend his cause in the American 
courts. 

''I made a great mistake," he added. *'If I had killed 
those Englishmen the American people would have been 
aroused and our cause would have been won. However, the 
Dutch have control of the government in the Transvaal, and 
as soon as England gets into trouble they will be inde- 
pendent. It is the greatest war in history and we ruined 
the prestige of England." 

Some time later he saw John Hay, who told him that the 
Dutch in the Transvaal were the vassals of the English. 



James Bryce 

October 15 and 16, 1912, the American Antiquarian 
Society celebrated at Worcester, Massachusetts, the hun- 
dredth anniversary of its foundation and assembled many 
distinguished men, including President Taft. Waldo 
Lincoln, the president of the society, gave us a luncheon in 
his house and I sat at a little square table, which could 
accommodate four persons, with Charles Francis Adams of 
Massachusetts and James Bryce, author of The American 
Commonwealth, and then Ambassador from England to the 
United States. A thin little man, with a bright eye and long 
whiskers, he is utterly incapable of dressing himself and his 
shirt bulged out in a hump before him, but alert, knowing 
and wise. 

*' I have all the works of Voltaire in my library, a hundred 
488 



MINIATURES 

volumes or so," said Adams, "but nobody reads Voltaire 
any more." 

"I could read the works of Jacob Boehm with interest, " 
added Bryce, "but not La Henriade.^' 

"1 have read La Henriade, " I ventured to suggest. 

"It is a pleasure to meet a man in America who 
has really read La Henriade, " replied Bryce in a tone 
which did not quite disclose whether it meant surprise or 
sarcasm. 

^'Rabelais can no longer be read," again suggested 
Adams. 

"It is too coarse," said I. 

"It is stupid," added Bryce. 

"So it is with Hudibras. Its wit is mere dullness," 
said Adams. 

"Take such lines as 

' There was an ancient sage philosopher 
Who had read the works of Alexander Ross over,' 

and they have some of that sort of fun which we found 
acceptable in the Ingoldsby Legends," I gently suggested, 
but it met with no response. Bryce made many queries in 
regard to existing conditions in America, but always stopped 
short at the point of danger and never ventured an opinion. 
The effect of the blending of races and the result of the 
coming presidential election interested him, but he had no 
views. 

"What will Pennsylvania do?" he inquired. 

"Vote for Taft, " I replied, and there the subject was 
dropped. 

He listened to the address of Henry Cabot Lodge, which 
contained many strictures upon England, without the 
indication of any emotion whatever. At the dinner the 
President, Bryce, Adams, Paget, the minister from Peru to 
the United States, and myself all made speeches. 

489 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Robert E. Peary 

On the 11th of December, 1909, I dined in New York 
with the Pennsylvania Society of that city at the Waldorf- 
Astoria. It was a great dinner given to Philander C. Knox, 
Franklin MacVeagh and Wickersham, the three Pennsyl- 
vanians in the cabinet of President Taft. The two United 
States Senators — Penrose and Oliver; Governor Stuart; 
Horace Howard Furness, the Shakespearean scholar; the 
former Governor, James A. Beaver; Von Moschzisker, the 
coming Supreme Court Justice; Lloyd C. Griscom; John 
Wanamaker; and many others were among the guests. 
Andrew Carnegie presided and did it well. It was my 
fortune to sit alongside of Robert E. Peary for the greater 
part of the evening. A few evenings before, in the Academy 
of Music, I had heard his first lecture since the discovery 
of the North Pole and once before I had dined with him, 
when he was not so famous. He received much of the 
attention shown to the celebrities throughout the evening 
and made the first speech. It was a meritorious speech, 
brief and with a thought in it. He said in substance that 
he had been born along the Susquehanna, reared in Maine, 
and supported by the contributions of New York, and, 
therefore, was under special obligation to the people of three 
states; that for hundreds of years explorers had striven to 
find the North Pole and to find a passageway between the 
two great oceans, and in our day both tasks had been 
accomplished. That was all he said. A tall, sHm man, 
with steel-blue eyes, a mustache, a sandy complexion, while 
the red in his hair was not at all a color but a tendency, 
alone pointing to some more or less remote ancestor, and a 
self-contained manner indicating strength of will and poise. 
He was not obtrusive or effusive, neither was he deprecatory, 
and when he spoke there was not the slightest symptom of 
nervousness. 

"Commander, when I heard you the other night, it was 
all clear to me except your getting across those stretches 
490 



MINIATURES 

of water you called 'leads.' I should not have liked to 
depend upon chipping off cakes of ice and zigzagging them 
across. A man on the far side of a lead might be in a 
confounded trap." 

A smile crept slowly over his face. 

"The danger is not so great. Generally they are not 
very wide. They freeze over. The effort to reach the Pole 
was made at the lowest temperature when this danger is the 
least. On one occasion, however, I realized what it meant. 
We came to a lead two miles wide. I thought out the 
situation and concluded to wait until it should be frozen 
over and we waited three days. Then my Esquimaux 
reported a crossing two or three miles away. We went over 
on snowshoes fifty paces apart and singly, but it was very 
dangerous and I feared we should never reach home to tell 
the tale." 

"Would it not be possible to take some Hght kind of a 
canoe along?" 

"No, the only hope of success lay in transporting as 
little as possible. We had to run the risks." 

To another query put by Mr. Lloyd C. Griscom, he said 
in reply: 

'* We lived altogether upon compressed foods. No coffee 
was permitted. Under the excitement of the advance, 
coffee would have resulted in loss of sleep and that would 
have meant loss of vital force. We needed it all. The 
ration was a quart of tea, m.orning and evening, but no 
coffee. Coffee is a drink for the tropics but not for the 
poles. We would not have a movement of the bowels for 
perhaps a week. There was no trouble to keep comfortably 
warm in a temperature of sixty degrees below zero. It was 
essential not to permit enough exertion to cause perspiration. 
That also meant a loss of force." 

He, himself, made a reference to Cook. 

"Commander," said I, "I had no confidence in Cook 
from the time of his initial telegram, which did not say he 

491 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

had found the Pole, but that he had been successful. If, 
however, he did get there it was partly an accident and he 
has not the merit of a man who has planned and labored for 
the result." 

"Governor, there is no 'if in the proposition. I knew 
the two Esquimaux who were with him, from their child- 
hood. They are very keen about directions and distances. 
They could not be mistaken about where they went. He 
wandered about the country, but he was never far from land. 
The Esquimaux are savages. If the wife of one of them for 
any reason cannot go hunting with him and the wife of his 
friend can, they trade wives and think nothing of it, but 
about many things they know better than we do." 

"Are you going to let that man Shackelford capture the 
South Pole?" I inquired. 

He rephed with earnestness: 

"If I had a hundred thousand dollars I should go 
there." 

This was interesting because it had been reported that 
he would never undertake anything of the kind again. 

"Why don't you seize upon Andy?" and I pointed to 
Carnegie, only a few feet from us. 

"He will not do a thing toward it, " he said rather sadly, 
and I gathered the impression that he had made the effort. 
In his canny fashion Andy had, nevertheless, introduced 
him as the only discoverer of the North Pole and committed 
the society to the statement. 



John R. Brooke 

John R. Brooke, who fought at Gettysburg, commanded 
in Cuba during our war with Spain, who has been the senior 
major general in the United States Army, called on me, 
November 26, 1913, together with Major David S. B. Chew, 
to ask me to try to prevent the memorial erected in 
492 



MINIATURES 

Germantown, to commemorate the battle, from being 
disturbed. 

By my appointment he had been a member of the com- 
mission which erected the memorial and had been much 
talked of for the governorship at the time I was selected. 
He told me of his trouble and then sat in my office and 
talked. A large man, weighing perhaps two hundred and 
twenty pounds, with gray hair, blue eyes and a double chin, 
he did pretty much all of the talking and was deliberate, 
with low, unemphatic utterance to the point almost of 
exasperation. He had been in the same class with Dr. 
Nathan A. Pennypacker in the school at the Trappe. He 
had been at the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettys- 
burg and had there spoken. In creating the commission 
Governor Stuart had asked him to be a subordinate to 
General Louis Wagner, who was never at Gettysburg at all 
and had commanded a negro regiment and was turned 
out of the commission by Governor Tener, but the General 
had held too high a rank to be a bob to any kite and he had 
declined. He had gone at one time to the office of General 
Wagner. As he entered he stepped on a mat and a bell 
rang. Wagner yelled at him : 

"Getoff of themat!" 

He turned around on the mat and the bell again rang. 

"Get off of the mat!" Wagner yelled more loudly. 

"He probably did not recognize you, " I gently suggested. 

"It makes no difference who I was, " rephed the General, 
"he is no gentleman. I turned on my heel and have had 
nothing to do with him since." And the General continued: 

"The rebels who tried to break up the government are 
now in control of it. The Secretary of War has ordered 
that wherever in the records of his department the word 
'Rebellion' is written, it shall be obliterated and the words 
'The Civil War' be substituted. It is all due to that fellow 
Roosevelt, who is disordered but has an infinite capacity for 
mischief." 

493 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

Woodrow Wilson 

Congress Hall had been restored to its original con- 
dition by the City of Philadelphia and was opened October 
25, 1913, with ceremonies consisting of addresses, a military 
parade and a banquet. I had met Mr. Wilson when he 
delivered an address before the University of Pennsylvania 
and now was one of the committee to receive him. We met 
him at the train, when he arrived at Broad Street Station, 
lunched with him at the Bellevue-Stratford and escorted 
him to the hall where he made an address. He is about five 
feet nine inches in height, with sparse hair, eyes of no 
particular color, a clouded skin, lips a little too thick that 
wabble about and do not fit together well, a smile that 
lights up his face but suggests that it is a thing of habit, 
and a body spare almost to the extent of emaciation. 

There are certain men whom I have encountered in life, 
some of them like William Sulzer and Israel Zangwill, who 
have reached distinction, who give me the impression that 
through generations of forefathers they have been unsuffi- 
ciently fed. A lack of nutrition, due to poverty or to 
weakness of the stomach, has affected their bodies and 
necessarily also their mental action. I have always thought 
that John Calvin must have belonged to this type. They 
are generally strong-willed and, within certain limits, 
efficient, but their judgments are never to be trusted, 
because they are not broad enough to see consequences in 
their causes. They make such fatal mistakes as burning 
Michael Servetus to advance the cause of Christianity. 

Wilson is a man of this build. While searching his 
features and contour, I felt that I could understand the 
character of the man who turned against the forces which 
elected him to the governorship of New Jersey; who, while 
looking for the presidency, asked Andrew Carnegie for a 
pension; who, while governor of his state, abandoned it 
and went to Bermuda; and who, calling the attention of 
the world to his first serious address to congress by going 
494 



MINIATURES 

in person to deliver it, wrote into it the remarkable figure 
of speech, '*an isolated island of jealous power." 

His address at Congress Hall had no relation to the 
occasion and had no value. He was brought into contrast 
with Champ Clark, round, healthy, jovial, with something 
of the milk of human kindness in his soul, who also made 
an address. After it was over and Wilson had slipped away 
to Swarthmore, I went up to Clark: 

"How do you do. Governor?" he inquired. 

"My name is Pennypacker, " I said at the same time. 

"Oh, I know you very well, and anyhow I could tell you 
from the caricatures." 

"You made a good speech," I followed. "I wish to 
goodness that while your Democrats were electing a 
President they had elected you." 

He laughed and replied : 

"So do I." 

I replied: "I should have felt much more secure about 
our national affairs." 

Then he grew sober. 



Edward T. Stotesbury 

Dining with Charles C. Harrison, the former provost 
of the University of Pennsylvania, on the evening of 
September 23, 1914, at his attractive country place, I sat 
at the head of the table with Mrs. Harrison and on my left 
was E. T. Stotesbury, the millionaire, who, entering the 
house of Drexel & Company years ago as a clerk at a small 
salary, is now the head of the establishment. A short, 
meagre man, with much vivacity, he told me that he had 
been much opposed to the nomination of George H. Earle, 
Jr., for the mayoralty of the city, but that now, under the 
Wilson regime, eleven hundred men had been discharged 
by the Baldwin Locomotive Works and every business in 

495 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

which he was interested was stagnant, and he hoped for the 
return of Penrose to the United States Senate. 

"I have just received a letter from the head of the 
firm of Harjes & Co., in Paris. It is pitiable. He asks 
me to be his executor. He tells me the Germans are near 
the city, that he does not know whether he or his children 
will be alive a week hence, that he does not know whether 
he will have anything to leave to them, that no man can 
tell what will happen." 

Stotesbury was interested in the opera in Philadelphia. 

"I paid Mary Garden," said he, "eighteen hundred 
dollars a night, and made an engagement to pay her eighty 
thousand dollars in the course of the winter. The news- 
papers accused me of spending too much time in her dressing 
room, while on the other hand she described me as "such a 
timid little man." 



Peary — A mundsen — Shackleton 

On the evening of January 16, 1913, at the Art Club 
in Philadelphia, I met Robert E. Peary, who discovered the 
North Pole, Roald Amundsen, who reached the South Pole, 
and Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Englishman who made a 
brave attempt to get to the South Pole, but failed. It 
certainly was an unusual combination to encounter at one 
time. A reception was given them by the Art Club, at 
which many distinguished Philadelphians were present. 
John Cadwalader escorted me to a seat at the luncheon 
upstairs and, being a member of the club, acted as a personal 
host. While we were chatting, we were interrupted, how- 
ever, by a gentleman who said he had been hunting for me 
and that the president of the club wanted me to dine with 
the guests. About twenty persons sat at the dinner table. 
It gave me the opportunity of seeing at closer range the 
explorers and saying a few words to them. Peary I have 
known and have elsewhere depicted. Amundsen is a tall, 
496 



MINIATURES 

bony man, with the Hnes of his face drawn, thin and tough, 
giving much the impression of a Calvinistic Scotchman, 
fed on oatmeal and the twenty-nine articles of the Covenant. 
He was, nevertheless, cordial and answered such questions 
as were put to him with few but direct words. He indicated 
a certain sense of power and is probably made of sterner 
stuff than most men. 

Shackleton, a short, stocky, dark-eyed and dark-haired 
Englishman, I pitied. What could be more uncomfortable 
than to feel that you had come near, but had not touched, 
the goal and then to be shown in contrast with two men, 
each of whom had succeeded in the diJEcult quest. 

General Nelson E. Miles, who was one of the party, 
came over and sat with me at the table after the cigars had 
been handed around. Much of his talk was about Roosevelt, 
whom he detested. 



Walt Whitman 
Once while I was active in the management of the Penn 
Club in Philadelphia, an institution at the corner of Eighth 
and Locust streets, started by my friend Wharton Barker, 
and which has entertained many distinguished persons, we 
concluded to give a reception to the "good grey poet." 
The gentlemen of the city were there, all in their evening 
dress. Whitman came over from Camden in a rough gray 
suit intended for the street and considerably the worse for 
wear. This was permissible if due to necessity or even to 
his own convenience. A large-framed, muscular man, he 
wore a long, heavy beard and gave the indication of brawn 
and vigor. Before coming he had industriously inserted 
forty or fifty pins in the lapel of his coat and they shone 
forth conspicuously. This, of course, was pure affectation, 
throwing doubt on the suit and giving the appearance of 
humbuggery to the whole performance. It has ever seemed 
to me that this element ran through all of his so-called 
poetry. There is much filth and wastage in the world, but 
32 497 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

nature soon covers it up and conceals it from view. To give 
it undue prominence is, therefore, to be unnatural and in 
effect is much like the ostentatious array of pins. Even 
decent people have at times occasion to make use of a 
Jordan, but they put it under the bed where the drapery 
hides it from sight. Poets Uke Whitman and noveHsts Hke 
Emile Zola and Thomas Hardy insist on putting it on th^ 
parlor ta ble, and they call this offense reahsm. 



Elihu Root 
I have met Mr. Root on two occasions; at Chicago 
where he made the speech nominating Roosevelt for the 
presidency, a speech which could not be heard and, there- 
fore, made little impression on the audience, and again at 
the Franklin dinner of the American Philosophical Society, 
where he sat between me and Henry Cabot Lodge of Massa- 
chusetts, whom he spent most of his time in jibing. A shm, 
rugged, iron-gray man who gives the impression of will- 
power and intelligence, which he undoubtedly possesses, 
he is a hving illustration of the old saw, "First get on, then 
get honor, then get honest." Beginning life as an associate 
of Tweed, progressing into a successful corporation lawyer 
and accumulator, he now, in his old age, proclaims that there 
are higher motives than the pursuit of money, and he is 
keen to perceive corruption in politicians outside of New 
York. He stood manfully by Roosevelt while the latter had 
power and then promptly dropped him. As a United 
States Senator, he represented the financial interests of 
New York City, and, if a choice had to be made between the 
welfare of the country and the welfare of these interests, 
always found good or plausible reasons for chnging to the 
flesh pots. As a statesman he ought never to be forgiven 
for his part in the surrender of our sovereignty over the 
Panama Canal. On the whole, he is a man capable of great 
usefulness, but entirely too shrewd and worldly-wise to be a 
safe dependence. 
498 



CHAPTER XVI 
John B. Pennepacker 

Sketch from Life 

I AM quite sure this will be found to be one of the most 
interesting and informing chapters in the Autobiog- 
raphy. The German people who, two hundred years 
ago, settled within twenty-five miles of Philadelphia, 
have held on to their land and preserved their language, 
habits and traditions and methods of thought down to the 
present time. This life is now all rapidly disappearing. 
The railroad, trolley and automobile and the approach of 
the city and its people, have compelled the old ways to 
succumb, and one of the most romantic and attractive of 
features of Pennsylvania life, such as exists in no other 
state, will soon be lost. I have endeavored to draw a pen 
picture in order to preserve and illustrate, as far as possible, 
the customs, dialect and manner of thought of these people. 
The gentleman whose name heads this chapter was selected 
solely because he is the most perfect survival of the old time 
to be found in the neighborhood. The incidents were 
written down on different occasions as they occurred. If 
I have not succeeded in making plain the keen, native intel- 
ligence, the generous spirit and the innate worth of my 
subject, which lie beneath the surface, then to that extent 
this chapter is a failure. 

It was seven o'clock in the evening and the shades of 
the coming night were beginning to gather. For a moment 
I leaned over the lower half of the stable door and watched 
him scattering the straw for the beds of the horses. 
"Is that you, John?" 
"Yes, diese is Chon. Com in vonce." 

499 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

"Oh, no, I must hurry home or I shall lose my supper." 

"Veil, maybe dass is besser. Dere is no supper here. 

It is long ago dat we had our supper and, " while a genial 

and kindly smile played over his face, "I sink it is pretty 

near all." 



John turned to me suddenly, while he held firmly the 
handle of the Dutch buckwheat cradle to keep it from 
scratching the buggy as we rattled along, and queried : 

"Did I efer tell you dat story of my grandfadder Chon 
Pannebecker and annodder feller, Neiman, vat vas wiss 
him? I sink I did tell you dat story vonce." 

"I cannot recall that you ever did." 

"Veil, Neiman, he vas a neighbor and my grandfadder 
he vas a little dricky. In dem days all de farmers dey used 
to go down to Philadelphey in big vagons to marget. Dey 
put up at de 'Sorrel Horse,' dat vas a davern in Fourth 
Street and Old York Roat. Diese Neiman, he liked oysters 
and he goes out and buys a big pag of oysters to take home 
wiss him. De farmers, dey nefer vent to bet, but dey lay 
down on de kitchen floor on deir crain pags ven dey vanted 
to go asleep. Den diese Neiman, he says, 'I am going to 
bet, ' and dey say, ' Don't you be so stuck up. You come and 
sleep wiss us, ' and off he goes to bet. Den my grandfadder, 
he goes out to the vagon and gets de pag of oysters, and dey 
eat all dem oysters and puts de shells back in de pag, and 
ties de pag up fery tight chust like it vas all right. And den 
ven dey all goes home and comes to Neiman's lane, my 
grandfadder he says, 'Neiman, don't forget your pag of 
oysters,' and Neiman, he throws de pag ofer his shoulder 
and off he goes. Pretty soon he sees Neiman come across 
the fielt and he looks fery mad. 'Wie gehts, Neiman?' 
says my grandfadder. ' Vere is my oysters? ' says Neiman. 
'Is dey lost? It must haf been de frost,' says my grand- 
fadder. 'In de vinter time ven de oysters freeze, dat opens 
de shells and dey all runs avay. ' It vas a fery cold day, dat 
500 



JOHN B. PENNEPACKER 

day, and Neiman he looks funny for avile and den he says, 
'Dat must haf been it.' He nefer knowed any better, but 
my grandfadder he vas a httle dricky. 

"John, be careful about the buckwheat cradle." 



One idea always suggests another to John and he goes 
ambhng along mentally with no particular destination in 
view, but ever entertaining and swept hither and yon by 
undercurrents of character, one of shrewdness and one of 
generosity. 

^'Dat vas a fery nice copper kittle at de Weishe vandue. 
Only it vonce had a hole in de bottom and hat been mendet. 
It vas not so nice a kittle as de one I let you have. Dat vas 
as nice a kittle as I efer saw. I vould haf kept dat vun for 
myself if you vouldn't haf vanted it. But ve haf such a 
vun at home — so! Dese kittles you could keep for a life 
time if you chust used dem yourself, but ven all de neighbors, 
dey vants to borrow dem to make abblebudder, den dey 
gets knocked. Some beople is careless. In olt dimes ven 
anybody porrowed a kittle dey had to give a pot of abble- 
budder. Dat vas de rule. But ve don't do dat vay any 
more. Ve chust lets dem haf de kittle. Mrs. Whitman, 
she vanted our kittle diese summer and I said all right, she 
could haf it. Den she sends me a pot of abblebudder. She 
is a fery nice voman. I did not vant it, but she chust makes 
me dake it." 

"Yes, John, that was a fine kettle I got from you." 

"So!" 



At Weishe's sale, August 25, 1908, quantities of home- 
made linen bags, some of them made in the time of the 
grandfather, used for wheat, marked with the name of the 
owner of that time, rough, coarse in fiber, but thick and 
strong, were sold for a few pennies. 

"Dey is fery good for dowels," said John. 

"Come in and get some tinner," said the very stout 

501 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

woman who was hustling about the old kitchen with its 
oven attachment, at the Weishe sale, to John and me. 
"You are right willkom." 

"No," answered John, "I don't vant any tinner to-day. 
My stomach is not all right. After a vile I vill go out to 
Jacob (who sold candy and peanuts from a stand, to the 
people at the sale) and puy me a blate of ice cream. Ven 
your stomach is not all right, and you don't vant to eat 
nossing, dere is nossing so goot for it as ice cream — sure." 
And he ate two plates of cream. 



"Nefer puy an olt vagon or an olt set of harness," is 
a part of John's farm philosophy. He was president of the 
Perkiomen Pike Company until the public took the pike, 
and is a director in the Schwenksville bank, and he owns 
four or five farms. He saw me tempted by an old farm 
wagon, well preserved, with huge rough timbers and great 
high dished wheels, made in 1781, which sold for $3.75. 

"If you can't affort to py a new vagon, vy chust shift 
until you gets a liddle money. My f adder fixed up an olt 
vagon vonce and he vas sorry all his Hfe. He says to me: 
*Dat vagon is no goot and it vould not pring vat it cost 
chust to fix it. If I'm not here any more, don't you puy dat 
vagon, Chon. Let it go at de vandue.' And so I dit. But 
I pought an olt set of harness vonce. Dey vas not chust 
so olt, but dey vas rubbed, and den ven I vas going down 
hill wiss my team de harness proke and I vas in drouble. 
You let somepody else puy dat olt vagon." 



"Do you know olt Mike Ziegler vat hfes up at Leder- 
achsville?" asked John one day when I met him in the 
Schwenksville street hurrying toward the plain brick house 
which is his home. 

' ' I have heard of him. The Zieglers are an old Mennonite 
family." 

"Veil, he got himself puried last veek — on Friday." 

502 



JOHN B. PENNEPACKER 

On his own lines, John is knowing. With the certainty 
of experience equal to instinct, he will go straight to the 
points of a horse or a bit of land or a corner clock. He 
informed me: 

"Dat gradle vat you pought at Weishe's vandue is not 
a gradle for vheat." 

It had a hickory handle and four hickory blades, and a 
broad steel blade six inches in width which the dengel-stuck 
a long while ago sharpened, but its day had departed and it 
cost me ten cents. "Dat gradle vas for puckvheat. Did 
you efer gradle?" 

"No, John, I never did." 

"Veil, my f adder vas a goot von to gradle. Many vas 
de day I gradled and I could gradle pretty goot too, but not 
Mke my fadder. He vould dake de gradle and cut de crain 
right quick and lay it all down on the cround chust so, and 
den he says to me, ' Dat is de vay you must alvays gradle 
too' — but I nefer could, " he added with a sigh. 



"Do you know dem vite oak and chestnut voods ofer 
on de Schtay-Barrick (Stein Berg) vere you and I vent von 
day wiss de buggy?" 

I knew them very well; they grew over the top of the 
rough hill amid masses of gneiss, smoothed by the floods of 
eons ago. They were not far from the Wolf's Den, a vast 
natural cavern constructed by the earthquake with immense 
blocks of upheaved granite. I so told John. 

"Veil, dem voods pelonged to olt Sam Pannuhbacker 
(the nearest approximate to the pronunciation) and den dey 
pelonged to Truckenmiller. Dat name is so long dat ve 
chust calls em T — Miller and ven dey gets puried up in 
Keeley's craveyard dat is vat goes on to de cravestones. 
Diese olt T — Miller, he hes up dere now. And den dey 
pelonged to Puhl and now dey pelongs to me. I vill nefer 
cut dem voods down so long as I hf. Dey can chust stay. 
Eferypody cuts down all de voods and after a vile dere von't 

503 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

pe no voods any more." And after a pause he slowly 
continued: ''Ven I am not here any more, den dey vill go 
too, but dat is vat I can't help." 



"Come ofer here vonce. I haf a liddle bresent I vant 
to gif you, " John called out to me, holding a book. 

It was a mystical treatise upon the Book of Revelations 
which had belonged to his great-grandfather, Samuel 
Pennypacker, who had entertained Washington at Penny- 
packer's Mills, and who had laboriously read through the 
book twice, marking each day's progress and making 
comment. John had had it bound in Norristown. 

"John, you ought not to part with that book." 

"Ach! I saw you look all ofer dat pook vonce and den I 
know you vants to take it pack vere it vas. Dat is all right, 
I dalk it ofer wiss my vife and she say, * Vat do I vant wiss 
such olt pooks chust to lie arount in de vay and make a dust. 
Gif it to de Governor, vor all I gares.' And so chust you 
dake it along, and velcome." 



"Haf you begun to do your seeting?" asked John on the 
8th of September, when the groimd and the weather were 
both favorable for the wheat. 

"No? Oh, veil, dere is dime enough yet. My fadder 
used alvays to say to me if it is September den it is not too 
early, and so long as it is September yet, den it is not too 
late." 



"I vas up in Percks County to see Chames Pannebecker," 
he reported after returning from a two days' trip with his 
wife and daughter. 

"Dere vas dree of dem Pannebeckers — Chames and Chon 
and Richard. Chon vas an old patchelor and he vas chust 
not so pright, and he goes to lif wiss Richard and den he 
makes a vill and gifes to Richard all vat he has. Dere 
vas a creat lawsuit about dat vill and dey don't speak to 
504 



JOHN B. PENNEPACKER 

vone annodder any more, and ven Richard gets puried 
Chames vas not invited to de funeral, but he goes to de 
Graveyard. I chust told Chames dat I vanted somesing 
vat pelonged to dem olt Pannebeckers to pring home for de 
Governor. Den Chames say he haf such a knife, vat olt 
Villiam Pannebecker made, vat made rifles in Langaster 
County for de Revolution, but he don't know vere dat knife 
is any more ; and den he calls de vomen and he says, ' Vere 
is dat knife vat Villiam Pannebecker made for me and I gif 
him a tollar for it?' and de vomen, dey don't know, dey 
haven't seen dat knife diese long vile any more; but dey 
hunt, and dere it vas in de drawer of de olt chest — sure." 

Out of his capacious pocket John drew a huge home- 
made knife, with a handle of maple wood, and a broad, 
curved blade, six inches long. 

"Here is dat knife; you can haf it. If you don't vant 
it, I vould chust keep it myself." 



"Pryan is out again to be President," said John, philo- 
sophical and reminiscent. ''I don't know much apout 
it, and I don't care much one vay or de odder. But I don't 
pelieve he vill efer be President. Ven a man vants an 
office so awful bad, dat is chust ven he don't get it. I could 
haf been a school director vonce, and I say to eferypody I 
danks 'em as much if dey votes against me as if dey votes for 
me." 



John is an elder in the German Reformed Church. He 
goes to church regularly every Sunday and all of his ways 
are upright. A neighbor said to me of him : ''If eferypody 
vas like Chon Pennepacker dere vould be little drouble in 
de vorld." 

His system of theology is simple. 

"John," I asked, "how does it happen that while your 
great-grandfather was a Mennonite, you are a member of 
the German Reformed Church?" 

505 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

"I don't know how dat vas. But I sink it vas diese 
vay. My grandfadder, he vas nossing. He didn't pelong 
to no church. But den he gets married. My grandmudder, 
she vas Reformed and so he choins wiss de Reformed too 
chust to blease her. Den my fadder, he vas Reformed, and 
den I comes along and I am Reformed." 



John makes an occasional deal in an old clock, a case 
of drawers, a walnut desk, a corner cupboard and a horse. 
Fully half a dozen tall clocks stand around the corners of 
his house, ticking the minutes and striking the hours, 
waiting until some eager antiquary comes to separate them. 

''Dere vas a rich voman, " began John (when I pressed 
him a little too closely about the profits on a clock), ''and 
she didn't haf any chiltren and she vanted to puy a horse, 
and it must be chust such a horse wiss such a color and wiss 
chust such a long dail. She didn't vant any horse vat 
come from de vest, but he must pe raised on a varm arount 
here, so dat he know de country and run up and down hill 
all right. Her man, he comes eferyvere lookin' for dat 
horse and den he comes to me and dells me vat drouble he 
haf wiss diese olt voman. He sees de horse vat I drife in 
my vagon and he looks him all ofer and he says: 'I am 
tired — awful — and I pelieve dat horse vat j'^ou got vould 
chust suit,' and I say: 'I sink so too; see vat a nice long 
dail. But how can I get de vork done on my varm wissout 
dat horse?' Den I ask de boys and dey say: 'Vat for you 
vant to keep dat horse wiss such a dail? You got horses 
a-blenty. Ve gets along all right. You chust sell him.' 
And so I lets him go wiss de man. After dat, venefer diese 
olt voman haf her friends come to bay her a visit on a 
Suntay, she dells 'em to go out to de parn, and look at dat 
horse vot she pought and dell her vat vas de madder wiss 
him, and dey all comes in and say dey looks him ofer fery 
particular and dere vas nossing de madder wiss him. He 
vas a goot horse. Den vun day a fellow vat vas a cousin 
506 



JOHN B. PENNEPACKER 

wiss diese voman, he runs ofer from de parn to de house and 
he say: 

" 'Vat you bay for dat horse?' And she say: 'Subbose 
I bay two huntert tollars for dat horse, vat about dat? ' 

''And he say: 'Dat horse is only vorth a huntert and 
fifty tollars.' Den she gets mad and she say: 'Vat is it 
your pusiness vot I bay for dat horse? If I choose to gif 
my money to Chon Pennepaeker, dat is all right. I may 
chust so veil gif it to him as to some odder beople vat I 
knows. I spends my own money.' " Then John added 
slowly, with a low chuckle: "I nefer heard no gomblaints 
apout dat horse. He had a long dail—chust so nice a dail as 
efer I saw." 



All of John's habits are steady and all of his instincts are 
conservative. The wind bloweth where it listeth, but John 
stays along the Perkiomen. He lives upon land which 
belonged to his paternal great-great-grandfather, and the 
family m two hundred and six years have not moved a 
mile. He buys manure in Philadelphia at a dollar a ton, 
pays the raih-oad a dollar a ton more for freight, and then 
hauls it to his farms, but bone and fertihzers are tabooed. 
With a touch of mahce, I said to him: 

''John, how do you think it would do to put up a silo?" 
"Some beople say dey gets more milk from de cows dat 
vay and some beople say dat dey is no goot. But I don't put 
up no silo. My son, Isaac, he hfs on my varm in Perkiomen 
Downship. Vun day he comes to me and he say, 'Pop, I 
sink maybe I could safe some money if I puild a silo right 
dere py de grick.' And den I say to Isaac, 'You don't 
puild no silo dere py de grick nor anyveres else. If you 
puild a silo you gets off dat varm— pretty quick.' " 

Three young ladies, John, my Brother James and myself 
had reached the middle of the Perkiomen in a flat-bottomed 
boat and were watching the shadows of the shellbark and 

507 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

sassafras limbs as they leaned over the beautiful stream, 
when we were startled. In one corner lurked, unobserved, 
a huge black spider of abnormal proportions and hideousness. 
Suddenly darting from its hiding place, it ran for shelter 
under the clothing of the tallest of the ladies. With a 
scream she rose to her full height and struggled to get on the 
seat upon the far side. As the boat lurched the situation 
became dangerous. 

"Sit down!" shouted my brother and I. 

Reaching over among the timorous feet, John, with the 
utmost deliberateness, caught the horrible creature in his 
naked hand and calmly tossed it into the water. 

"Vomen and spiders has no pusiness togedder in de 
same poat, and so I puts de spider in de grick, " he explained 
as we regained our poise. 



Like some other people whom I have known, John has 
no great opinion of my horsemanship. To drive my carriage 
with me in it would be contrary to all his ideas of propriety, 
but he watches over me with tender care. His suggestions 
begin remotely and are hidden with delicate cleverness. 

"De superfisors, dey don't know nossing apout de vay 
to ment roads. Dey chust dig out de gutters and drow de 
mud in de middle of de roat, and den ven it rains de mud all 
vashes back again and de ruts is deeper dan dey vas pefore, 
and if a fellow don't go ferry slow ofer dem ruts he preaks 
his vagon. Dere is vun of dem ruts now; chust look vonce 
and see vat goot diese superfisors pe." And again : " Dat is a 
fery nice blace to hitch your horse, but de vhes is awful 
pad and ven de sun gets arount dere dey all comes out. Dat 
dree has more shade and is not so goot for de vlies." 

The wagon went slowly over the rut, and the horse was 
hitched to the tree. 



On the 20th of March, 1909, in that marvel of rural 
energy and enterprise, Pennepacker and Bromer's store in 
508 



JOHN B. PENNEPACKER 

Schwenksville, Prizer, the postmaster, leaned over the 
counter and gave John a special delivery letter. 

"John," said I, interrupting, ''I have just bought a 
farm and maybe I can borrow some money of you to help 
pay for it." 

His eyes had an uncertain look, but he said: ''Come 
ofer to de house vonce." 

When I was seated in his old-fashioned hickory chair 
with split seat, he continued : 

"Did you vant some money? I haf a liddle money vat 
I got from a man ofer in North Vales. Or vas you only 
chokin?" 

Touched by the readiness of the offer and its trustfulness, 
I hastened to explain: 

"Oh, no, John, the farm is paid for and I already have 
the deed." 

"Veil, I thought maybe you vas only chokin'. I heart 
you pought de Gebert blace. Dat blace pelonged to my 
grandfatter, Chon Pannebecker. He got it from his fadder, 
olt Sam Pannebecker, and olt Sam, he got it from his fadder, 
Peter. My grandfadder, he sold it to olt Pete Schneiter. 
Schneiter cut off de voods and sold avay some of de land; 
the Perkiomen Inn is puilt on dat land. My grandfadder 
puilt de house and de parn wiss oak timber vat dey cut on 
de blace. In dem days dere vas no pridge ofer de Perkiomen 
and it vas a fery bad ford. But dese olt beople, dey nefer 
mindet de high vater. Dey vas no dummies. Dey chust 
pushed dru wiss de hay vagons and on horsepack. My 
grandmutter say she often rode dru de Perkiomen wiss de 
vater up to de horse's pelly. She pull her feet up out of de 
vater and trust to de horse. You pought dat blace cheap. 
You vill nefer lose nossing." 



"I nefer owned a gun in my life," said John to me one 
day when we talked of Roosevelt, "and I nefer shot a rappit 
or a pird wiss a gun, and ven my poys began to get big and 

509 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

vanted to puy a gun, den I dells 'em, if dey pring a gun home 
I vill preak it to bieces, and dat stopped 'em. Vonce I 
caught a rappit in a drap pehint de parn and den I vas 
sorry. And I nefer goes a-fishin', " he added. "Ven ve 
first moved to Schwenksville I said to my vife, 'Now, I vill 
catch a mess of fish in de Berkiomen.' Den I puys a net 
and sets it in de grick, and next morning sure enough it vas 
chust vull of fish. Den I sets it again and dere came a high 
vater and avay vent de net down to Philadelphey and dat 
ended my fishin'. I pelieve it is petter to let de rappits 
and de pirds and de fish go dere own vay, and I lets 'em 
alone." 



" My f adder, " said John, "he vas a strong man. Vy he 
could stant on de grount and chust take a horse by de mane 
and chump right on to de mittle of his pack. I haf seen 
him do it many a time ven he vas forty years olt. He say 
efery young man ought to be able to do dat much, but I 
nefer could. I could stant on a Httle hill and chump on to 
de horse's pack, but not from de efen grount." 



He pulled his long beard further down toward his sus- 
pender buttons, and a sly twinkle came into his blue eyes, 
which were fastened intently upon me. Finally he said: 

"You got that Gebert blace awful cheap. You could 
not puild de house for twenty-five huntert tollars, and you 
got a parn and twenty-tree acres of lant peside. Olt Chonny 
Markley vas in too much of a hurry. But he vas tired of 
de whole pusiness and chust so he got rid of it, dat vas all. 

"I must dell you a liddle story about dat blace. It vas 
maybe fifteen years ago ven de Pennsylbany Railroat sent 
a lot of enchineers up de Berkiomen Falley to lay out 
annodder railroat. Dese enchineers, dey stopped at olt 
Dafy Bean's davern. Olt Dafy, he feeds 'em efery morning 
wiss molasses pies and sugar pies and abble pies and blum 
pies and eferysing vat vas goot. So pefore dey goes avay 
510 



JOHN B. PENNEPACKER 

vun of dese enchineers vinks at olt Dafy and say to him, 
'You go ofer dere and puy dat varm from Hiestand.' Hie- 
stand vas de feller vat owned it, and he blanted dem abble 
drees. Dat vas enough. Chust ven de sun vas up olt Dafy 
valked ofer de pridge and he say to Hiestand : 'You vant to 
sell diese varm diese long time — now you has a chance. I 
vill gif you seven dousand tollars for diese varm." John 
made a long pause in silence and then continued : "Dere vas 
somesing vat happened. De fery day vat de enchineers 
goes avay de chypsies comes along de Berkiomen wiss dere 
vagons and dere horses and dey gamps in de meadows and 
steals chickens. Wiss dese chypsies vas an ugly olt voman 
vat dells vortunes. Dat night Hiestand goes to de gamp and 
he pays diese olt voman to dell his vortune and how he vill 
make money. She dells him: 

" 'Dere is a man coming ofer to puy your varm. Don't 
sell it to him, and you vill make lots of money.' Sure 
enough, along comes olt Dafy. Hiestand says to him : 

" 'You needn't come ofer here tryin' to puy no varms. 
I likes diese varm all right. I vill chust keep it.' 

"And den," said John, concluding with a touch of phil- 
osophy, "de Pennsylfany Railroat didn't lay out any new 
roat and Hiestand, he lost money on his varm, and de vink 
vat dat enchineer gif and de vortune vat dat olt voman dell, 
dey vas bose alike and vas no goot." 



"You knew James Pennypacker, who lived near 
Schwenksville at the time of the family reunion, very well, 
did you not?" 

This was a query put to John as I pondered over the huge 
folio Bible of Peter and his son Samuel, with its family 
records and its notes of deep colonial snows and the coming 
of the Continental Army. I had bought this Bible from 
James, now long dead. Nearly forty years ago I wandered 
with satchel and staff up into the Perkiomen Valley, then to 
me a strange land, in the search for information. Finding 

511 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

James at his plain stone farm-house, two miles from 
Schwenksville, a stout, well-kept Pennsylvania Dutchman, 
with keen eyes and bunches of rough side -whiskers, jovial 
and hospitable, he for an hour poured forth his store of 
genealogy and local lore. All that he could remember from 
the tales of the elders about the occupation by the army he 
gave me with the piquancy of the vernacular phrase and 
tone. When the fount was exhausted, I said to him: 
''Have you any old papers of any kind? " We sat on oppo- 
site sides of an ancient walnut table without cover. For 
full a minute he looked me shrewdly in the eyes, and then, 
going to a cherry corner cupboard which stood in the room, 
he took from it a home-made linen bag filled with old deeds. 
Without a word he laid it on the table. I shook out the 
papers, about thirty in number, and proceeded to examine 
them. They were the title papers of Pennypacker's Mills 
from the very beginning, and few of them had ever been 
recorded. There was the deed from William Penn with a 
good autograph and a fine impression of his seal on wax. 
Generally such seals are broken, , but this was perfect. 
There were the deeds to and from Hans Joest Heijt, who 
built the house and the mill and later founded the settle- 
ments in the Shenandoah Valley and became, in Virginia 
annals, not only famous but a baron. There was a deed all 
in the handwriting of Francis Daniel Pastorius, the founder 
of Germantown, and three impressions of the seal he devised 
containing a representation of a sheep with the letters 
F, D. P. There was a deed from Hendrick Pannebecker 
with his autograph, and I then had nothing in his hand- 
writing. The situation had become dramatic. Finally I 
slowly said : ''Would you care to part with these papers? " 
"Vat vould you gif for dem?" 
"I will give you five dollars for them." 
"Very veil, you can chust take 'em along." 
I put the deeds back into the linen bag made a century 
and a half ago by Elizabeth Keyser, the wife of Peter Penny- 
512 



JOHN B. PENNEPACKER 

packer, and he put the five dollar note in his pocket. Then 
a merry twinkle came into the eyes which had been stern, 
and he said: 

"Veil, now, vasn't dat funny? Ven me and my brodder, 
ve settled up dat estate ofer dere, and eferysing vas all 
fixed, and dere vasn't nossing to do any more, den dere vas 
dat olt pag of teeds. And I says to my brodder, ' Vat shall 
ve do wiss dese?' And he says, 'Ach, dey are no use any 
more, ve vill chust chuck dem into de fire.' I vas chust 
about to chuck de pag into de fire and den I says, ' Ach, I vill 
keep dat pag and maybe sometime dey vill pe some goot? 
And now you comes along and you gifes me five tollars for 
'em." 

He had shown more foresight and got more out of the 
estate than his brother. Perhaps no two people ever con- 
cluded a bargain with more mutual satisfaction than he 
and I did. The incident was recalled and so it happened 
that I put my query as written above, to John. 

"Yes, I knowed him fery veil. He vas my cousin and 
he owned the next varm to vere I fifed. He could take 
his own bart ven it come to svearin' and vas awful rough 
dat vay, but he vas a goot neighbor. He vas a creat man to 
smoke. He smoked a bipe. Vonce ve vent to see him in de 
efening and he vas in ped alreaty. Den he gets up and ve 
could hear him upstairs hammerin' de tobacco into his bipe 
pefore he comes down. He filled it four times vile ve vas 
dere. He had von pad hapit vat I nefer could pear." 

"What was that, John?" 

"He vould smoke his bipe in de parn. Olt Dan Hun- 
sicker vas a director in de pank at Pottstown. Dere vasn't 
any pank at Schwenksville den, and Uncle Sam Panne- 
becker — he vas fadder to James — put his money in dat pank. 
Olt Dan, he knowed it vas dere pecause he vas a director, 
and he asked Uncle Sam to lent de money to him and he did. 
After a long vile I knowed how sings vas and I told Uncle 
Sam: 'You are going to lose all dat money.' He says, ' Vy? 
33 513 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

He bays de interest all right.' Den I says, ' You are going to 
lose all dat money — you petter get a chudgment.' He says, 
'You see olt Dan for me.' So I goes to olt Dan and gets a 
chudgment note and it vas entered up. I told Chames and 
he says he vould haf nossing to do wiss it. After avile olt 
Dan vanted to put a mortgage on his house and de lawyer 
at Norristown finds diese chudgment. Den olt Dan vanted 
me to satisfy de chudgment and I say, ' No, I vill not satisfy 
de chudgment.' Chust den Chames, he haf some money, 
den olt Dan and his vife, dey go to Chames, and him and 
her dey bawled like pabies, and Chames — he vas goot- 
hearted if he vas rough — he let 'em haf it." 

"So that in the end Hunsicker got the money from the 
son, with which he paid the father." 

"Dat was chust it, and Chames nefer got his money any 
more. Ven he tried, olt Dan got sassy and called him 'de 
plack tevil!' It sometimes habbens dat vay ven people do 
favors. But I heard de varmers say dat ven Chames vas a 
young man at home, vere you lif now, he vould do more 
vork for his fadder dan Hen and Ben togedder — dey vas his 
brodders — and he vas a goot neighbor." 



As the horse pulled up the hill toward the Reformed 
Church John stopped for a moment in front of a house where 
a bunch of crepe hung upon the bell knob of the front door. 
"Dat is vere olt Chonson lifs. He died de utter day." 



"Poys is fery much alike," said John, philosophically. 
"Ven my poys vas crowing up, Jonas he vas pretty near as 
pig as Isaac. And my vife, she makes deir clothes all out 
of von biece of stuff. It safes money to puy stuff by de 
biece. Ven dey vas not chust so near, I couldn't dell 'em 
apart, and ven von of 'em vas across de field and I called to 
him, 'Come ofer here vonce, ' den it vas de utter vun." 
514 



JOHN B. PENNEPACKER 

John is the largest land holder of the neighborhood, 
owning in different tracts about four hundred acres — 
''coot and pad," according to his description. 

"Dat varm vere you vas vonce vhere de persimmons 
crow is out of de vay down in a valley and hart to get at, but 
my fadder gafe me dat varm and I vill take care of it so 
long as I lif. Ven I am gone vonce, den dat is somesing 
else." 



"This is the worst summer, John, I have ever known 
(1909). How does your corn look? " 

"Chust hke yours. Ve ought to haf some rain vonce." 



There was a cold eastern rain upon one of the early 
days of May — a day not bracing with the cold of winter, but 
one that makes the nerves creep with dampness and chilhness 
and renders any glow of extreme heat a real comfort. 

"On such a day as vat diese is a stofe comes right 
handy," was John's sage comment. 



Among the Pennsylvania Dutch with whom John has 
passed his days there is a pecuHar use of the word "why" 
which is always curious and sometimes startling. 

"John," I once asked, "can you tell me when the next 
train will leave Schwenksville for Pennsburg?" 

"Yes, I can, vy?" was the response which came 
promptly, but was more illustrative than instructive. 



As he reached out for his straw hat with its unusually 
broad brim, he said: 

"My time is all but up alreaty and I must go home." 



"John, what was that contrivance used for, that you sent 
over to me the other day?" I inquired. 

It consisted of a slab supported upon four hickory legs. 
Through the center ran a movable strip. On the upper 

515 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

end of the strip above the slab was fastened the heavy end 
of a log and the lower end below the slab could be controlled 
with the foot. 

"I pought dat sing at de Markley sale. It vas a kind of 
a wice. A long dime ago, ven de olt fellers vanted to make 
an axe handle, dey sat on dat slab and holt de biece of vood 
dight wiss de end of de log and den dey cuts it into shape 
wiss a knife." 

"What shall I pay for it, John?" 

"Ach, nossing. It only cost a few bennies." And then 
he added with charming naivete: "I vould haf kept it 
myself only I had no room for it. Ven you gets so much 
such stuff, den you don't know vot to do wiss it. So I 
gifes it to you." 



He ambled along: "Ven I vas a poy dey didn't sow any 
wheat arount here. It vas all rye. My mudder, she say to 
me, I should chust come ofer here vonce. She vas making 
rye pread. Dat vas de only pread ve had and it vas goot, 
too. She raise de dough in vone of dem straw paskets. 
Den it vas turned upside down on a paddle and put into de 
ofen. Dere it vas paked on de ofen floor." 



May 5, 1912. 

I showed John an old Dutch brass snuff-box with a 
representation on it of Christ drinking at a well. 

"My grandf adder, Chon Pannebecker, had a rount black 
snuff-box. He dakes de vhite snuff and de black snuff and 
mixes 'em togedder. I often vishes I had dat snuff-box. 
Dere vas red flowers on de lid. I don't know vere it vas 
any more. I don't know vat you sink, but I am not vor 
Teddy Roosevelt. I sink dat man had better not come out 
for President any more. He has had enough and dat is 
vat ve haf had, too." 
516 



JOHN B. PENNEPACKER 

August 8, 1912. 

"John, who is that Uttle man?" I asked. 

We sat on hickory chairs on the porch in the shade of a 
thriving vine which climbed to the roof. I pointed to a man 
about five feet four inches in height, thin and swarthy, what 
the French would call Chefif, with dark eyes and bandy legs, 
who lounged against the fence. 

"His name vas Prown. He lifs in de voods back of 
Reed's Mill. Dere he makes paskets out of vite oak and 
hickory. Dere ain't any of dem pasket-makers arount 
any more. He learnt to make paskets from his grandfadder, 
olt George Prown. Olt George has peen tead it vas dirty 
years or more. Ven he vas alife yet he goes about de 
country wiss his back all covered wiss paskets so ven you 
look at him you could see nossing but paskets. He makes 
all kinds of paskets out of straw and hickory, and de 
rount pread paskets. Do you haf rye pread at your 
house?" 

"No, John, we don't use rye bread." 

"Veil, ven I vas a poy it vas de only kind of pread ve 
had. It vas right goot. You can't get any rye flour now. 
De millers crind all de meal out of de flour. But my mudder, 
she sift it for herself. Dere is no more such dimes as dem 
vas. Diese feller vant me to gif him an olt pair of poots. 
Dere is an olt pair in de parn vat is vore out and no goot any 
more, but he says dey is goot." 

"I suppose he finds life a little hard?" 

"It is all his own fault. He is too lazy to vork. And 
ven de huntin' season comes along you can nefer catch 
him at home. He is off after rappits. He lifs cheap, puys 
olt stale pread and eats rappits." 

Brown carried off the boots. 

The homely arts which once supported these people have 
been swept away by the onward march of events, and those 
who have only learned the crafts of their grandfathers have 
dwindled with them. 

517 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

There were three of us — my brother, Isaac, my son, 
Aubrey, and myself, who called on John the morning before 
Easter in 1913. He came into the room after a short 
delay, wearing a rough woolen jacket with bone buttons. 

"John, have you been in bed taking a nap?" I inquired. 

"Ven I sleeps in de tay-time, I sleeps in de parn," was 
the answer. 

We drifted to the profits of farming at the su ggestion of 
Isaac. 

"Your brodder and I, ve bose varms de same vay and ve 
bose knows how ve make out. Ach, it all depends, some- 
dimes ve gets a goot feller to vork and somedimes it is de 
udder vay. I vonce had a feller and ven he came to me he 
had nodding — maybe a year's vages. I nefer had to dell 
him vat to do. He chust do it. He looks out vor me and 
vor himself too. Ach, he got along. Ven I vants to gif 
him somesing he say no, but I makes it up to him some udder 
vay. Ven he goes avay he had fifteen huntert toUars. He 
vas de right kind, but dere is no more now like he vas." 

"How long did he work for you, John?" 

"Nineteen years." Then he changed the topic. 

"Isaac, you are chust hke my Uncle Sam. He vas a 
tall, slim feller and vas a creat man to valk. He valked 
eferyvheres arount the gountry. Vy, he vould valk five 
miles. He said he nefer liked to ride in a vaggon pecause 
it made him so tired. 



July 8, 1913. 

We were sitting, my Brother James and I, on the green 
in the shade of a hickory tree (pignut) whose spreading 
and graceful branches swung far out in search of air, when 
John came driving along. In the field beyond, the farmers 
loaded the timothy hay on to the wagon. 

"Vy don't you fellers get up and go to vork?" was his 
greeting. 

Aad then he told us of the time when his grandfather, 
518 



JOHN B. PENNEPACKER 

John, who had owned the ground on which we were lying, 
had first seen a railroad train. It was about to start on the 
Reading road and he drove over to Royersford, five miles, 
to inspect the phenomenon. 

" 'Veil, vat did you sink of it?' was the inquiry when ht 
reached home. 

"It is a nasty sing to frighten horses," he rephed. 

"When were you last in the city?" my brother inquired. 
The city was Philadelphia, twenty-seven miles away. 

"It vas apout dree years ago," said John. Then, turn- 
ing to me: "I haf somesing I vant to gif you. I vish I had 
seen you pefore you vent to Gettysburg." And as he drove 
away, I heard, "Come ofer vonce." The gift soon was sent 
to my house and proved to be a pair of old leather saddle 
bags in good preservation. 



August 1, 1914. 

This afternoon John rambled along with very little 
consecutiveness of thought, but ever entertaining. 

"Do you vant to puy a horse? Dere vas a man offered 
me a horse — dat vas yesterday — for sixty-five toUars. 
You don't haf to pay as much for horses chust now as you 
did pefore harfest. But den he vas seventeen years olt. 
Maybe you don't vant a horse so olt. Somedimes dese olt 
horses is fery goot on a varm. I haf vorked out a goot 
many olt horses. But I vould nefer sell 'em. A man offered 
me a huntert toUars for a horse twenty-two years olt, but 
he did not get him." 

"My grandfadder, Chon Pannebecker, built the stone 
house (one of the farm houses) vat you own. He vas a 
placksmith. De cround vas nearly all covered wiss voods. 
He used charcoal. Dere vas no hart coal in dose days, and 
dey had to keep de fire half covered up or it vould pe all 
pumed out." 

"My grandmudder vas Mary Snyder; she vas ninety-one 

519 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN 

years olt ven she died. Ven she vas ninety, she vould 
come into de room and sit town in a chair and say : 

" 'I can't do anysing any more, you vill haf to get 
somepody to help.' She vould sit avhile and den go out 
to de kitchen and fuss around and come back and say: 

'No, I don't vant nopody; dere is nossing to do here, 
and Sam he alvays helps and gets sings vor me.' She did 
all her own vork. But ve did de vashing for her — dat she 
couldn't do." 



520 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 



GOVERNOR PENNYPACKER'S MESSAGE TO THE 
LEGISLATURE, 1905 

Executive Department, 

Commonwealth or Pennsylvania, 

Office of the Governor, 

Harrisburg, January 3, 1905. 
To the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of 
Pennsylvania: 

Gentlemen: — In his message to the assembly, December 9, 
1803, the Honorable Thomas McKean, then governor of this 
state, said that Pennsylvania commanded "general admiration 
and respect for the melioration of her penal code, for the good 
faith and punctuality of her fiscal transactions, for her benevolent 
and literary institutions, for her encouragement of public improve- 
ments in roads and inland navigation, and for the ardor and dis- 
cipline of her militia," and he added, "the geographical position 
and the political rank which we hold in the Union seem to assign 
to us the patriotic task of setting an example of virtue and indus- 
try, of public spirit and social harmony." Much of this depiction 
of then existing conditions may after the lapse of a century be 
repeated with propriety. 

The reports of the various departments, which are herewith 
submitted, show a state of affairs which ought to be very gratify- 
ing to the good people of the commonwealth. For the fiscal year 
ending June 1, 1904, the receipts of the treasury amounted to the 
sum of $21,789,940.75. During the same period, the payments for 
the expenses of the government were $19,266,369.11, leaving a 
balance of receipts over expenditures of $2,523,571.64. The 
moneys in the treasury on the first of June, 1904, were $16,801,- 
067.38. The debt over and above the value of bonds and cash 
in the sinking fund was on June first, 1903, $335,507.21, and on 
June first, 1904, $232,858.76, so that substantially the common- 
wealth is free from debt. During the same fiscal year, there were 
expended for the support of the schools $6,013,725.58, in aid of 

523 



APPENDIX 

the various hospitals and other charities of the state $2,913,367.10, 
in relief of the counties in the rebuilding of bridges which had been 
carried away by floods $504,551.55, and for the erection of the 
new state capitol $1,000,000.00. It is creditable that the capitol, 
which approaches completion and promises to be in every way 
suitable for the purposes intended and worthy of the common- 
wealth, is being built for the reasonable sum of $4,550,000.00 
and paid for out of revenues. When we reflect that the capitol of 
Massachusetts cost $6,980,531.59, paid for with moneys raised 
upon bonds, and that the capitol of New York cost $24,265,082.67, 
these figures ought to be very satisfactory. The capitol would 
be much improved if there could be secured an extension of the 
present somewhat limited grounds surrounding it. The ideal 
plan in my view would be to connect with the city park by open- 
ing from the front, say between South and State streets, to the 
river. A suggestion which would perhaps lead to less expense 
would be to secure the properties in the rear on which for the most 
part are erected a poorer class of buildings. The question is very 
much one which will have to be considered from the point of view 
of the resources of the state. 

With respect to the rebuilding of county bridges, I recommend 
that the amount to be expended each year for this purpose be 
fixed at such a figure as may seem to the legislature to be wise. 
Under the law, as it exists at present, there is no limitation to the 
sum which the Board of Public Grounds and Buildings may be 
required to expend in this way, and at a time of the coincidence 
of great floods and diminished revenues, the situation might lead 
to serious embarrassment. If a certain proportion of the cost of 
constmction of these bridges were left to the counties instead of 
the whole burden being imposed upon the state, they would have 
a substantial interest, not only in making effort to save the bridges 
from destruction, but also in the preservation of such of the 
material as could be utilized. 

The subject of the charities aided by the state is one which 
ought to receive your serious consideration. The number of 
hospitals, most of them doing much to benefit suffering humanity 
in their, respective localities and worthy of support, is contin- 
ually increasing and the sums appropriated to them already 
reach what in some other states would be regarded as an enor- 
mous expenditure. If the commonwealth is to continue its 
present policy of assistance, there ought to be some systematic 
and business-like method provided, both for securing information 
as to the needs of the institutions and for supervising the expendi- 
524 



APPENDIX 

ture of the moneys contributed by the state, so that it may be 
known that these funds are actually required and are applied 
without extravagance to the purposes for which they are intended. 
It is unfair that the burden of investigation should be imposed 
upon the committees upon appropriations of the senate and 
house to be completed during the brief periods of the sessions. 
No matter how long and late they labor at the task, the results 
in the nature of things must be imperfect. The time is insuffi- 
cient and only interested parties appear before them. The efforts 
of members to secure these appropriations for institutions in the 
districts they represent are a hindrance to and interference with 
general legislation. A plan could be adopted which would not 
in any way interfere with the visitatorial powers of the Board of 
Charities, and perhaps the most effective way would be to increase 
their powers and agencies. 

An earnest effort has been made, in which all the heads of 
departments have participated, to reduce the bulk of the depart- 
mental reports which had gradually grown to unwieldy propor- 
tions, and thus to reduce the expense of printing. The report of 
the Factory Inspector, which in 1903 covered 1,206 pages, in 1904 
was reduced to 190 pages and gave practically as much informa- 
tion. The volume of laws for the session of 1903 covered 661 
pages, as compared with 1,013 pages of laws for the preceding 
session. During the last year the expenses for printing have 
been reduced to the extent of $107,168.44 from those of the year 
before, and to the lowest figure, with one exception, in nine years, 
notwithstanding a great increase in publication owing to the 
increase of departments and the growth of public work. The 
statute, which regulates our public printing and established the 
existing schedules, was passed in 1876. Since that time there 
have been many changes in type-setting and the arts of typog- 
raphy and book-binding. The schedules are inadequate and 
obsolete. Much of the work necessarily done is not provided 
for in them, and, therefore, is paid for at special rates. The last 
contract awarded four years ago was let at a rate 88.01 per cent 
below the schedules, which is an absurdity. It is hoped the 
legislation on this subject will be revised. 

The Department of State Highways, provided for by the act 
of April 15, 1903, has been organized in compliance with the 
terms of the act, and is making satisfactory progress. There 
are at present completed, under construction, and approaching 
construction, in forty-five counties of the state, 127.42 miles of roads. 
Beside the work done by the state, a number of townships, under 

525 



APPENDIX 

the incentive of the example set before them, have themselves 
raised moneys and proceeded to improve their highways. Thus, 
in Bensalem Township, in the County of Bucks, where the state 
constructed three miles of the road, the township has added ten 
miles more, constructed in accordance with the regulations of the 
department and under the supervision of the commissioner of 
highways. No such important work has been undertaken by 
the commonwealth for many years. It means much for the prac- 
tical welfare of the whole people. It ought to be pushed forward 
thoroughly and energetically. Owing to the lack of knowledge, 
upon the part of contractors, township and county officials, of the 
kinds of material necessary, methods of construction, and plans 
of proceeding, personal attention by a representative of the 
department is in most cases required. A larger force would seem 
to be demanded in this department in order that the accomplish- 
ment of its objects may not be retarded. 

The state now owns 544,958 acres of land for forestry reserva- 
tion purposes, and is under contract to purchase 154,863 acres 
more, making a total of 699,821 acres. While it is continually add- 
ing to its purchases for this purpose, it is by a strange anomaly also 
continually making sales of lands at a merely nominal price under 
old acts which have never been repealed, relating to the disposi- 
tion of unseated lands. This legislation came into existence in 
the early days of the province and state when land was plenteous 
and inhabitants were few, and was intended to encourage settle- 
ments by offering inducements to all comers. That condition of 
things has long passed away and the legislation has been taken 
advantage of in order to get possession of valuable tracts of min- 
eral lands and other property without an equivalent considera- 
tion. I recommend that legislation be at once enacted that the 
Board of Property dispose of no lands belonging to the state until 
they have been first examined by the commissioner of forestry 
to ascertain whether they are adapted for forestry purposes, and 
if found to be so fitted that they be retained for these purposes, 
and that when lands are sold by the Board of Property they be 
sold at public sale to the highest bidder. The forestry lands con- 
stitute a large domain and since they have been purchased means 
ought to be taken for their preservation and proper utilization. 
The only use to which they have heretofore been put, apart from 
the cultivation of the trees, has been an occasional lease for mining 
minerals and the tuberculosis camp at Mont Alto, where twenty- 
two patients are given the opportunity for outdoor life with, I am 
informed, marked success. The efforts for the preservation of 
526 



APPENDIX 

the forests, the game and the fish, all of which the state has under- 
taken, seem to look to the accompHshment of ends closely related, 
and it is well worthy of consideration whether better results could 
not be secured by a combination of them. The fish propagate 
in the streams, the streams traverse the forests, the game for its 
life needs both stream and forest, and all of them require the 
employment of watchmen and wardens. 

The greatest injury to the forest lands arises through fire. I 
recommend as one means of diminishing the loss which comes 
from this cause that the railroad corporations of the state and 
those having railroad lines passing through it be required, under 
fixed penalty and the payment of resultant damages, to put out 
all fires within one hundred feet of their tracks, except in muni- 
cipalities. No doubt, under its police power, the state could pre- 
vent the use of fire as a danger and, if so, such an act which would 
be in effect permitting the use of fire upon condition would prob- 
ably be held to be constitutional. The spread of forest fires is 
very much increased by the fact that the lumbermen and others 
when cutting down the trees leave the strippings and waste lying 
upon the ground. These become dry and form a mass of light 
material, over which the flames sweep. I recommend the passage 
of a law requiring all persons and corporations who may here- 
after, for any reason, fell forest timber, to remove from the woods, 
when they take away the lumber, all other parts of the trees, and 
imposing a suflicient penalty in the event of failure to comply. 
It is submitted, for your consideration, whether it would not be 
wise to determine what sum should be expended each year in the 
purchase of forest lands, so that the commission may be relieved 
from this serious responsibility. 

During the past year, 377 books and pamphlets relating to 
Pennsylvania and its literature during the period of the develop- 
ment of her institutions have been added to the State Library. 
Under the direction of the present trained librarian, the work 
of the library has been systematized and improved, and its bene- 
fits to the community correspondingly increased. This library 
ought in time to be a repository of all the printed material and 
manuscripts relating to the Hterature, the laws, the history and 
the poUtical progress of the commonwealth. For the completion 
of its sets of laws, and in order to keep up with the pubhcation of 
law reports, so that at the capital of the state there may be a 
sufficient opportunity for the study of legislation and decision, a 
somewhat larger appropriation appears to be necessary. The 
Department of Public Records, provided for at the last session, 

527 



APPENDIX 

in connection with the library, has been organized and is doing 
efficient work. The archives upon which the foundations of our 
history rest, and which, up to the present time, have lain about the 
cellars and out-of-the-way places, being gradually stolen, lost and 
destroyed, have been gathered together and are now being repaired 
and permanently secured in volumes chronologically arranged 
and open to the investigations of scholars. Twenty-two such 
volumes have already been completed. The information con- 
tained in them is much sought by persons all over the country 
interested in hereditary societies and in research, and much of 
the time of the attendants is occupied in answering inquiries and 
supplying information. I suggest that the librarian be directed 
to charge a fee of two dollars for each certificate given and the 
sums received be paid into the state treasury for the use of the 
commonwealth. In this way the department will, to a certain 
extent, be made self-supporting. 

When the new capitol is completed, the building now occupied 
by the executive will be abandoned by him. Its erection in 1893, 
cost $500,000, one-ninth of the contemplated cost of the capitol. 
It is commodious and in many ways artistically constructed, and 
it presents a good appearance. To remove it would seem to me 
to be wasteful and unwise, I recommend that it be utilized for 
the library and that the sphere of the librarian be enlarged and 
that he be authorized and directed to collect and preserve in it 
objects illustrating the fauna, flora, entomology, mineralogy, 
archaeology and arts of the state. Such a collection would have 
great educational as well as practical value, and be a subject of 
interest to citizens and strangers visiting the capital. Whenever 
national or international expositions are held, the state at great 
outlay makes sudden efforts to gather for the purpose the objects 
which illustrate her progress. Here would be a supply of such 
material, not hastily and crudely brought together, but selected 
with care, thought and deliberation. 

The work of the Dairy and Food Division of the Department 
of Agriculture is of great importance in its relations to the com- 
munity in every point of view. If deleterious substances may be 
introduced into the human system in the guise of food, or the 
supply of nutriment to men, women and children be diminished 
in order that greater profit may result to the manufacturer and 
merchant, the spirit of commercialism threatens, not only the 
welfare, but the existence of the race. On the other hand, the 
dread of such results may stimulate hasty judgments, unjust to 
the individual so charged and injurious in its effects upon the 
528 



APPENDIX 

necessary production and sale of food supplies. The commis- 
sioner has made an earnest effort to avoid the dangers which lie 
upon each side of this problem, and at the same time has enforced 
the laws upon this subject with a zeal and earnestness, it is safe 
to say, unequaled anywhere else in the country, and never before 
equaled in the commonwealth. The results are gratifying, not 
alone as an exhibition of attention to duty, begun under abuse 
and continued under most difficult circumstances, but the investi- 
gations of the division show that recently there has been a marked 
improvement in the character of food supplies sold in the state. 
If this has been accomplished, it is an achievement, the impor- 
tance of which cannot be overestimated. The receipts for fines 
and licenses collected by this division during the last four years 
are as follows : 

1901 $34,705.19 

1902 43,635.41 

1903 93,458.71 

November 1, 1903, to October 31, 1904. . 115,007.60 

As at present constituted, the expenses of the division are in 
the main paid from the sums collected for fines and licenses. This 
is a system which ought not to exist in connection with the work 
of any of the departments, no matter how efficiently and honestly 
they may be conducted. The legislature ought to provide by 
appropriation whatever may be necessary to meet the needs of 
the division, and all collections should be paid into the state 
treasury for the use of the commonwealth. 

The details of the work of the departments to which no special 
reference is here made, will be found in the respective reports, 
and upon the whole it is being performed in a way to reflect credit 
upon the commonwealth, and justify satisfaction if not elation on 
the part of her citizens. 

The Valley Forge Commission has, up to the present time, pur- 
chased in all 391.499 acres of ground, and secured both the outer 
and inner lines of intrenchments of which the latter have remained 
pretty much as they were at the time of the encampment of 
Washington's army. The acquisition of these lands and the 
establishment there of a park to be forever maintained and cared 
for by the state, where all the people of the nation may come to 
gather inspiration from the fortitude of the fathers, were very 
commendable, and show a proper appreciation of a priceless pos- 
session. Much has been there accomplished by the cormnission 
at comparatively little expense. Avenues have been laid out 

34 529 



APPENDIX 

and views improved, so that nowhere in the country can be found 
surroundings more attractive to visitors. The number of persons 
from at home and abroad who go there is continually and rapidly 
increasing. There have hitherto been no salaried positions in 
connection with the commission, but it would be well to consider 
whether the time has not arrived when provision should be made 
for the permanent care of the park. 

During the last session of the legislature there were a number 
of bills passed for the erection of monuments in various parts of 
the state and upon battlefields outside of it, to signahze and pre- 
serve the recollection of important events. To commemorate the 
achievements of those men who in the past have rendered impor- 
tant military and civic service to the state and conferred honor 
upon her is commendable, since it shows her gratitude, and bene- 
ficial, since it presents an example and arouses a spirit which in 
time of need may save her from danger and disaster. If such 
appropriations are to be continued, there ought to be a wise 
selection of subjects so that attention may be drawn to that in 
her career which is most honorable. Among the men of Penn- 
sylvania most conspicuous for military achievement during the 
Revolutionary period was Anthony Wayne; during the Rebellion 
was George G. Meade. To Meade there are monuments in Fair- 
mount Park and at Gettysburg — to Wayne there are none in the 
state. At this time, when the nation is celebrating with vast 
outlay the Louisiana Purchase and the settlement of the West, 
it would be a fitting season for Pennsylvania to erect upon the 
hills of Valley Forge, where his brigade lay, or at some other 
proper place, an equestrian statue to Anthony Wayne, perhaps 
the most imposing and potent figure in the western settlement. 
The Pennsylvania Society Sons of the Revolution have already 
raised a sum of S8,380.35 for a like purpose. This fund is under 
capable and intelligent supervision and it might perhaps be wise 
to supplement their efforts. 

An act of February 27, 1865, provided that any corporation 
owning or using a railroad might apply to the governor to com- 
mission such persons as the corporation should designate to act 
as policemen for said corporation. These policemen were to pos- 
sess in the respective counties the powers of policemen of the 
City of Philadelphia, and jail-keepers were directed to receive all 
persons arrested by them for the commission of offenses against 
the commonwealth along the railroads. The companies were to 
pay the policemen and when the services were no longer required, 
they were empowered to discharge them by notice filed in the 
530 



APPENDIX 

office of the recorder of deeds of the respective counties. The 
system thus estabhshed has grown by subsequent legislation, and 
now railroads, collieries, furnaces, rolling mills, coal and iron 
companies, corporations for the propagation of fish, and many 
other corporations have their force of policemen exercising the 
authority of the commonwealth. There were issued in 

1901 570 police commissions. 

1902 4,512 police commissions. 

1903 186 police commissions. 

1904 187 police commissions. 

Usually these commissions have been issued at the request of 
the companies and have been unlimited in duration. A practice 
has recently been instituted in the Executive Department limiting 
the appointments to a period of three years, and requiring the 
applications to set forth under affidavit the circumstances making 
the appointment necessary, the capability, and reputation for 
sobriety and peacefulness, of the person named, and that he is a 
citizen of Pennsylvania. But it needs little thought to see that 
the system is objectionable upon principle and is likely to be 
ineffective in practice. The act upon which it is based is inarti- 
ficially constructed, and, were the question raised, would prob- 
ably be held to be unconstitutional by the courts. Where police 
are selected, paid and discharged by the corporations, and bear 
the name of ''coal and iron police, "it is evident that they are in 
effect the servants of their employers rather than of the common- 
wealth whose authority they exercise. The arrest and incarcera- 
tion of a citizen for breach of law is one of the most fundamental 
and delicate of the functions of sovereignty, and the protection 
of property and the prevention of breach of the peace and dis- 
turbance are among the most important of its duties. The one 
ought not to be delegated and the other ought not to be evaded. 
To attempt to do so is to abdicate sovereignty and to accomplish 
it would seem to be a legal impossibility. The state stands above 
interests in controversy and its powers ought not to be used by 
either of them. In case of disturbance, no confidence can be 
placed in the discreet use of the power of the state by persons 
dependent upon others for their positions. On the other hand, 
it is the duty of the state to see to it that the exercise of the fran- 
chises granted by her is not impaired or interfered with by vio- 
lence. It would be well for you to consider whether the time 
has not arrived for the state to resume these functions and to 
authorize the appointment by the governor of a constabulary of 

531 



APPENDIX 

sufficient force, say ten in each county, to be used wherever 
needed in the state in the suppression of disorder. They could be 
utilized in the place of the corporation police, the game wardens, 
fish wardens, forest wardens, the officers of the different boards 
and commissions exercising police authority, and would enable 
the executive, in cases of emergency, to "take care that the laws 
be faithfully executed," as the constitution requires, and they 
would be likely to inspire a confidence not now felt. The objec- 
tion to such a course is the expense. To this objection there are 
several answers. The state ought to provide for its necessary 
work before being generous, no matter how meritorious the 
recipients of its bounty may be. It is doubtful whether the 
expense of a regular constabulary would, upon the whole, be 
greater than the occasional calling out of the National Guard, 
which it would at times obviate. Much of what would be the 
expense is now being incurred in desultory ways, and the expense 
of the corporation police comes ultimately from the people. 
Finally, it may be said that this constabulary could be taken from 
the ranks of the National Guard, thus starting with a disciplined 
service, and that no doubt the corporations would be satisfied to 
be assured of protection to their property and to be relieved of 
the burden of maintaining their present police. 

There are many incongruities in our laws with regard to cor- 
porations, due largely to the fact that the legislation has been 
often enacted with reference to particular subjects without suf- 
ficiently considering its relation to the general system, and they 
ought to be corrected. Probably the best method would be to 
provide for a commission of expert lawyers, to be appointed by 
the governor, who could go over the whole subject carefully and 
report a code or what changes may be necessary. All corporations 
before they can be chartered, are required to give notice by 
advertisement of their applications, except railroad and street 
railway companies. It would seem to be specially important that 
these companies should give such notice. The act of 1889, as 
amended by the act of 1901, requires that the charters of street 
railway companies shall name the streets and highways upon 
which the railways are to be laid. But it further provides that 
the companies shall have authority to construct such extensions 
as they may deem necessary to increase their business, and this 
is accomplished by filing, without public notice, a copy of the 
minutes in the office of the secretary of the commonwealth. It 
has become a custom, more or less prevalent, to secure charters 
upon obscure streets and reach the main avenues by means of 
532 



APPENDIX 

this privilege of extension, which is entirely within the control of 
the companies and is subject to no supervision. If a railroad be 
incorporated twenty miles in length it must, under the act of 
April 4, 1868, have a capital stock of $10,000 per mile. If it be 
incorporated with a length of five miles and then be extended to 
twenty miles, under the act of May 21, 1881, it is only required to 
have a capital stock of $5,000 per mile. The principle upon which 
the grant of franchises to corporations is supported is that there 
are business operations important to the community which are 
beyond the financial strength of the individual, and that by the 
union of the resources of many persons, may be accomplished 
and thus the public be benefited. As a compensation for the 
benefits so conferred, liability is transferred from the individual 
to the artificial person created by the law. We have been grad- 
ually losing sight of the pubhc good involved in the arrangement, 
and reducing the number of corporators until now any three per- 
sons may secure incorporation for profit. In other words, a man 
wishing to start any business venture by giving a share of stock 
to his clerk and another to his messenger may escape individual 
liability for the indebtedness incurred. But one step remains 
and that is the reductio ad ab'surdum of making a single person a 
corporation for profit. Most of such corporations now secure 
under our laws grants in perpetuity. There ought to be a rea- 
sonable time limit in every charter, say one hundred years, at the 
expiration of which the grant terminates so that some control 
may be maintained and the future not burdened with conse- 
quences which cannot be foreseen. The mountains shall sink 
into the sea, in time the sun shall disappear from the heavens, 
and no charter should purport to endure forever. The question 
of requiring railroads, railways and pipe lines to file with their 
applications maps of the proposed routes may be considered, and 
the rights of telephone, electric light and natural gas companies 
in furnishing their facihties, raising difficult problems, ought to be 
defined. 

In my inaugural address of January 20, 1903, and in my mes- 
sage giving the objections to the act authorizing railroads to take 
dwellings by condemnation proceedings (see Address, page 3, 
and Vetoes, page 125), I called attention to the principle that only 
public necessity could justify the taking of private property by 
eminent domain, and suggested the propriety of the ascertain- 
ment by the state of such need before any franchise is granted, 
including this right. Without going over these propositions 
again, I renew the suggestion and refer you to what was there 

633 



APPENDIX 

presented. If the legislature should deem it wise that the state 
should exercise such supervision, there ought to be provision made 
for a competent state engineer. The need for such an expert 
oflBcial would be not only for this purpose, but in the Highway 
Department and in connection with the building of bridges. 
From June 1, 1903, to June 1, 1904, there were paid to engineers 
for the preparation of plans and supervision of construction of 
bridges $25,277.55, and since that time probably fully as much 
more. The services of a capable engineer, regularly employed by 
the year, could be secured for a much less sum. It is true the 
payments are now made by the counties, but it would be a narrow 
view which would separate the people and the commonwealth. 
Whatever may be the conclusion of the legislature upon this sub- 
ject, there ought to be the utmost care exercised in granting to 
corporations the right to take private property. 

The question whether trust companies, which have of recent 
years played so important a part in the management and settle- 
ment of estates, and with which so much of the current moneys of 
the community is deposited, should also be permitted to do an 
insurance, surety and guarantee business upon the same capital, 
which involves another kind of risk, is one of moment and could 
properly be considered by such a commission as that proposed. 

The large deposits of coal, anthracite and bituminous, which 
underlie the valleys and mountains of this state, are being shipped 
in profusion over the world where they become the foundations 
of industries and bases of wealth, or are wasted in harmful wars in 
South Africa or Manchuria, with which we have no sympathy. 
One of these days, the deposits will have been exhausted. It }s 
only fair and exceedingly proper that Pennsylvania should derive 
some benefit from that which the Lord has given to her. I sug- 
gest that you consider the propriety of imposing a slight tax 
upon each ton of coal mined, so small in amount that it would 
not prove burdensome to consumers or interfere with trade, the 
proceeds of the tax to be used only in the construction of roads, 
or in the maintenance of schools in relief of the school tax now 
imposed by the counties. 

The constitution directs that immediately after each decen- 
nial United States census, the general assembly shall apportion 
the state into senatorial and representative districts. No sena- 
torial apportionment was made after the census of 1880, 1890 
or 1900. Not only is the mandate of the constitution disobeyed, 
but the existing condition of affairs is unjust to Allegheny and 
other counties which have not the representation to which they 
534 



APPENDIX 

are entitled. With the passing of each decade and the shifting 
of population, the unfitness of the present apportionment is 
increased. The difficulty has not been with the legislature, which 
no doubt would have been entirely willing to fulfil its constitu- 
tional obligations, but inheres in the constitution itself. Never- 
theless, a solution must be found. The constitution provides, 
Article II, Section 16, that the state shall be divided into fifty 
senatorial districts of compact and contiguous territory as nearly 
equal in population as may be. Each district elects one senator. 
A ratio is determined by dividing the whole population of the 
state by fifty. Each county containing one or more ratios is 
entitled to one senator for each ratio. No county shall form a 
separate district unless it contains four-fifths of a ratio, except 
where the adjoining counties are each entitled to one or more 
senators, in which case it may have a senator with a population 
exceeding one-half of a ratio. No county shall be divided unless 
entitled to two or more senators. No city or county shall be 
entitled to representation exceeding one-sixth of the whole num- 
ber of senators. The trouble with this method is that it cannot 
be applied. In the first place, fifty cannot be divided by six in 
such a way as to be applicable to senators. In my view the city 
which is entitled to eight and one-third senators is entitled to 
nine, if it has sufficient population, for the reason that a provi- 
sion which deprives certain people of their representation because 
of location ought to be construed in such a way as to cause as 
little deprivation as possible. As they cannot have one-third 
of a senator without having a whole senator, they ought to have 
the entirety. This in practice, however, has been limited to 
eight instead of nine and is not the difficulty which has been 
regarded as insuperable. This difficulty may be illustrated by a 
reference to Lebanon County. It is surrounded by counties, 
each one of which has a ratio or more, and is, therefore, entitled 
to a senator and to be a separate senatorial district. Lebanon 
has not half a ratio and is, therefore, entitled to no senator. What 
is to be done with it? There are two main thoughts in the con- 
stitution. One is that the state shall be divided into districts. 
This is essential and fundamental. The other is that the division 
shall be made in a certain specified manner. This is secondary 
and incidental, and if impracticable must yield in the place of 
least resistance. Maintaining the provision that the districts 
shall comprise compact and contiguous territory, as nearly equal 
in population as may be, and preserving as well as can be done, 
the lines of counties, the direction that "no county shall be divided 

535 



APPENDIX 

unless entitled to two or more senators," must where necessary be 
overborne, and the districts be created notwithstanding. 

It would be an advantage if the houses had counsel charged 
with the duty of ascertaining the relation of proposed legislation 
to existing laws, and of seeing that legislation is so expressed as 
to accomplish the object intended. It is not to be expected that 
legislators should have technical training in law, and it is fair to 
them that they should be supplied with such assistance. At the 
last session, several meritorious acts were necessarily vetoed 
because of imperfect construction. 

It has come to be a custom to provide for executive work by 
the appointment of commissions by the legislative body to whom 
it is entrusted. Beginning in a small way, the custom has grad- 
ually grown until a large proportion of such measures adopted 
are managed in this way. The executive is only one of a number 
of commissioners having responsibility without control, and 
occasionally it has happened that an official, such as the state 
treasurer, has been designated in the commission in such manner 
as to impose the duties upon the individual and not the incumbent 
of the office. It is a custom more honored in the breach than in 
the observance. Where governments have fallen, it has gen- 
erally been because of encroachments by one department upon 
the province of others. The constitution has given "supreme 
executive power" to the governor and it is his duty to see that 
the laws are faithfully executed. It is, of course, a convenience 
to the governor that he should be relieved of burdens, but it is a 
relief that ought not to be conceded. He may well appoint 
commissions when necessary, but it comports neither with his 
duty nor the dignity of his office that he should be a member of 
commissions otherwise appointed. A further and very plain 
objection is that when the governor appoints, in case of incom- 
petency or misbehavior, he may remove, while the legislature, 
after adjournment, does not meet again for two years and can 
exercise no control over the appointees. 

There are still some of the departments of the government of 
the commonwealth which are, to a certain extent, supported by 
the fees collected, and these are received, in whole or in part, by 
the incumbents. The fee system was convenient at a time when 
the commonwealth was impoverished and officials had difficulty 
in finding sufficient employment and needed an incentive. This 
condition of affairs no longer prevails, and the system which was 
its outgrowth should be aboHshed. All officials should be paid 
proper compensation for their services and all collections made 
536 



APPENDIX 

by them should be paid into the treasury for the use of the 
commonwealth. 

Everthing possible ought to be done to encourage the creation 
of a single municipality which shall include all of the extensive 
population at the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela 
Rivers, now under the authority of several different mimi- 
cipal governments. Such a course would result in a saving of 
expense, an improvement in official tone, with increase of respon- 
sibihty, and an advancement in prestige and influence. Not 
only the people of the locahty, but those of the whole common- 
wealth are interested, and they should be aided by all necessary 
legislation. At the other end of the state, the great industrial 
interests and the vast population along the Delaware at Phila- 
delphia, Chester and other places are in a sense hide-bound. 
The way to the sea has been, to a considerable extent, closed to 
trade, because of distance and imperfect channels. Few natural 
obstacles are so great that energy will not overcome them. By 
opening the Erie Canal, De Witt Clinton brought the trade of 
the lake region to New York harbor and enabled the city there to 
become the chief port of the country. Philadelphia m the days 
of our fathers sought to regain her lost supremacy by building a 
railroad across the mountains, of which she should be the eastern 
terminus and whose directors should be all "citizens and resi- 
dents of this commonwealth." Failure should only be a stimulus 
to greater exertions. The engineering feats of the people of Man- 
chester, Glasgow and Holland can be repeated in America. All 
the great power and influence of the commonwealth and her rep- 
resentatives in national affairs, financial and political, should be 
exerted to secure the deepening of the channel of the Delaware 
and if need be in addition to dig a ship canal across New Jersey 
direct to the ocean. 

It is high time that attention be given to the preservation of 
our streams, gifts of God to humanity, which are essential to 
happiness and comfort and even to life. In western Asia are vast 
lands where once were teeming civiHzations now barren wastes, 
because the people did not understand how to take care of their 
water suppUes. Our streams are losing both beauty and utility, 
and are being encroached upon by filling along their banks and 
using them as dumps for the refuse and pollution which come from 
mills, factories and habitations. They are also being seized upon 
by those who hope to make them commercially profitable, and 
in some instances the waters are being diverted from their chan- 
nels. There was a time in the history of the world when a man 

537 



APPENDIX 

could not be born or married and could not die without sharing 
his substance with ecclesiastics. If we are not careful, another 
time will come when we cannot drink or breathe without paying 
tribute to those who have secured control of the natural suppUes 
of water and air. Probably nine-tenths of the charters for water 
companies which have come before me in the last two years have 
been instances in which the parties securing the grants had no 
intention of supplying water to consumers, but sought to get 
privileges which would be available in the market. It is a sub- 
ject of difficulty and ought to be studied. 

Section VII, Article 8, of the constitution, adopted November 
5, 1901, at an election by the people, provides: "All laws regu- 
lating the holding of elections by the citizens or for the registra- 
tion of electors shall be uniform throughout the state, but laws 
regulating and requiring the registration of electors may be 
enacted to apply to cities only : Provided, That such laws be uni- 
form for cities of the same class." The adoption of this amend- 
ment indicates that some changes in the present system of regis- 
tration were deemed to be necessary. I recommend that proper 
legislation to comply with this provision of the constitution 
receive your attention. 

At the last session of the general assembly, an act was passed 
requiring newspapers to exercise reasonable care with respect to 
what they published, and further requiring them to print upon the 
editorial page the names of those responsible for the publication. 
Although, as was natural, it caused some adverse criticism upon 
the part of many of those affected by it, the requirement of the 
pubHcation of the names of the editors and business managers 
was at once obeyed by the press of the state, and the act has 
resulted in a marked improvement in the amenities of journahsm 
in so far as they concern persons in private life. It is also evi- 
dent that the act met with the grateful approval of the people. 
At the recent election, of those members of the senate and house 
who voted for this bill, seventy-six were re-elected and two were 
defeated. Of those who voted against the bill, twenty-eight were 
re-elected and ten were defeated. Of those who voted against 
the biU 26.3 per cent, and of those who supported it 2.5 per cent 
were defeated. Further legislation is required for the protection 
of the commonwealth from the injury to her reputation and the 
disadvantage to the administration of her affairs which arise from 
the prevalent dissemination of scandalous inventions concerning 
her officials and their efforts in her behalf. It is not only an 
unseemly spectacle, but it is a crime which the state ought to 
538 



APPENDIX 

punish when day after day thiB mayor of one of her cities is 
depicted in communion with a monster compounded from the 
illustrations of Cope's Palaeontology, and Dora's Dante. The 
enforcement of the municipal law is impeded, and, therefore, 
the state is concerned. We are compelled to recognize that since 
the cry of the liberty of the press became a Shibboleth, the rela- 
tion of the newspaper to the government and the people has been 
very much modified. No ruler now sits by divine right in his 
palace and writes lettres de cachet to confine his subjects in some 
bastile at his own will, and on the other hand the newspaper will 
sometimes become, not the representative of the people seeking 
information for their good, but a commercial venture, the adjunct 
of a business house, the maia object of whose existence is to aid 
its patron in selling his wares, as anxious to attract attention to 
them by startling postures as a circus poster. This means that 
the attitude of the statesman with respect to them must be 
changed with the change in conditions. In this conmionwealth, 
in the main, the country press endeavors to ascertain and further 
the interests of the people surrounding them. In the large cities, 
what is popularly called "Yellow Journalism," with its gross 
headlines, its vulgar and perverted art, its relish for salacious 
events and horrible crimes, and all the other symptoms of news- 
paper disease, is gaining a foothold. There is a daily newspaper 
of wide circulation, published in the City of Philadelphia, ostensi- 
bly by a Pennsylvania corporation. This corporation was char- 
tered May 18, 1899, with an authorized capital stock of $25,000, 
of which the amount actually paid into the treasury of the cor- 
poration was $2,500. So far as the records in the office of the 
secretary of the commonwealth show this amount has never been 
increased. A twenty-story building on the main street in the 
heart of the city, largely rented out for offices and other business 
purposes, bears its name. Since its incorporation, it has paid 
to the commonwealth in taxes $5.73. Since its control of what 
had been a useful and venerable newspaper began, every mayor 
of Philadelphia, every governor, every United States senator, 
save one who has only been in oflfice four weeks, and every legis- 
lature of the commonwealth, has been subjected to a daily flood 
in its columns not of adverse comment, but of invented imtruths. 
The state expended a considerable sum of money upon the cele- 
bration of Pennsylvania Day, August 20, 1904, at the Louisiana 
Purchase Exposition in an effort to impress upon the nation the 
importance of her participation in the settlement of the West. 
Her building and much of what she put on exhibition were excep- 

539 



APPENDIX 

tionally meritorious. But the gentleman put in charge of the 
agricultural exhibit at the outset bought in St. Louis two lots of 
seeds, one costing $17.60, and the other about $5.00, and put 
upon plates, without names, some breakfast foods manufactured 
in various states, the various products of corn wherever made, 
and added them to his display. He had been selected, overlook- 
ing political affiliations, because of his connection with the Penn- 
sylvania State College, where agriculture is taught and his previ- 
ous experience in a similar charge at Chicago. His explanation 
is that seeds are a marketable commodity, which, wherever 
bought, may have been grown in any other locality, that it was 
an important education for farmers to see all the ways in which 
corn could be utilized even if they had to step over state lines, 
and that no one could tell where the corn was grown from which 
its products were made. However forceful this reasoning may be, 
the management differed with him in judgment, his connection 
with the exhibit terminated May 31, 1904, and these articles were 
removed. If there had been any mistake, it had long been cor- 
rected. These few simple facts, at most of uncertain significance, 
this newspaper by the addition of falsehoods, innuendoes and 
extravagancies elaborated into nine columns and illustrated with 
seventeen pictures. The publication, saved up until August 19th, 
was adroitly timed so as to have it do what could be done by scat- 
tering it over the country to soil the celebration and thwart the 
object of the state. It talked of "unparalleled fraud" and 
"graft," although such a suggestion in connection with the sum 
of $22.60 was a manifest absurdity. It gave what purported to 
be an interview with a member of the commission. The written 
denial by the commissioner of the facts alleged in the interview 
is on file among the papers of the commission. He was made to 
say about tobacco that "I understand that not a leaf of this most 
important part of Pennsylvania's agricultural product is on 
exhibition." The tobacco then on display subsequently received 
in competition with the whole world the very highest prize. It 
said the sum expended upon the exhibit was $15,000. The sum 
actually expended was $8,999.26. It told the people over the 
country that this exhibit was "a fraud, a hypocritical sham, an 
insult to the farming interests and a disgrace." As a matter of 
fact, the exhibit was so creditable that the officials of the exposi- 
tion awarded to it three grand prizes, the highest possible award, 
twenty gold medals, twenty-one silver medals and thirty-two 
medals in bronze. 

All of the people, proprietor and peasant, churchman and 
540 



APPENDIX 

heathen, are concerned alike that a deliberate policy of false 
report to secure ill-gotten gain should not succeed. What is the 
remedy? Sooner or later one must be provided. Recently in 
one of the states, an offended citizen shot and killed an editor, 
was tried for murder and acquitted. Lawlessness is the inevitable 
result of a failure of the law to correct existing evils. How can 
the right of a newspaper to publish the facts concerning the gov- 
ernment and its officials and to comment on them even mis- 
takenly be preserved, and the continuance of intentional fabrica- 
tion in the guise of news be prevented? The constitution in the 
same section provides for freedom of speech, as well as freedom 
of the press. Under the EngUsh common law, when a woman 
habitually made outcries of scandals upon the public highways 
to the annoyance of the neighborhood, she was held to be a com- 
mon scold and a public nuisance. Anybody may abate a public 
muisance, and she was punished by being ducked in a neighbor- 
ing pond. Notwithstanding our constitutional provision con- 
cerning freedom of speech, in the case of Commonwealth vs. 
Mohn, 2 P. F. Smith, page 243, it was held that the law of com- 
mon scolds is retained in Pennsylvania, though the punishment 
is by fine and imprisonment. To punish an old woman, whose 
scandalous outcries are confined to the precincts of one alley, and 
to overlook the ululations which are daily dinned into the ears 
of an unfiling but helpless public by such journals as have been 
described, is unjust to both her and them. I suggest the appli- 
cation of this legal principle to the habitual publication of scan- 
dalous untruths. Let the persons harmed or annoyed present a 
petition to the attorney general setting forth the facts and if, 
in his judgment, they show a case of habitual falsehood, defama- 
tion and scandal so as to constitute a public nuisance, let him 
file a bill in the court of common pleas having jurisdiction, asking 
for an abatement of the nuisance, and let the court have author- 
ity, upon sufficient proof, to make such abatement by suppres- 
sion of the journal so offending, in whole or in part, as may be 
necessary. Since this adaptation of existing law is only to be 
applied to the elimination of habitual falsehood in public expres- 
sion, it will probably meet with no objection from reputable news- 
papers. Since both the attorney general and the courts would 
have to concur, the rights of legitimate journalism are sufficiently 
protected and it is only in an extreme case that the law could be 
invoked. For that case, it provides a remedy. I submit here- 
with (marked A) a draft of an act upon these lines. 

The commission to provide for the participation of the state 

541 



APPENDIX 

in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition has performed its duties 
with fidehty, reasonable economy and success. The building 
erected for the state was commodious, impressive and artistic. 
It is believed that it was visited by more persons than all of the 
other state buildings combined. It cost with furniture and 
decoration of the grounds $96,145.64, which is $24,126.92 less 
than the cost of the structure devoted to like uses at the Colum- 
bian Exposition at Chicago. Among the decorations were forty- 
four portraits in oil of the leading personages in the history of 
Pennsylvania, and from among them portraits to the value of 
$2,500 have been retained for the new capitol. The prizes 
awarded by the authorities of the exposition were numerous and 
creditable to the state. The commission will return to the state 
treasury out of the appropriation of $300,000 made by the last 
legislature a considerable sum, approximating $30,000. 

In 1905, there will be held in Portland, Oregon, the Lewis 
and Clark Centennial Exposition to commemorate the one hun- 
dredth anniversary of the exploration of the Oregon country, 
and in 1907, there will be held in Virginia an Exposition to com- 
memorate the tercentenary of the Settlement of Jamestown, the 
earliest settlement of Enghsh people lq North America. I call 
your attention to these important events for such action as you 
may deem wise. 

Such legislation ought to be adopted as will aid in ensuring 
the maintenance of the health of the people by providing ade- 
quate means for the prevention of the pollution of the streams 
and water supplies, the prevention of the spread of typhoid fever^ 
diphtheria and similar diseases through the dissemination of their 
germs, and providing for the registration of births, deaths and 
cases of contagious and infectious diseases. The present system 
which imposes upon the boards of school directors in many coun- 
ties the duties of local boards of health is inadequate and needs 
revision. 

The affairs of Pennsylvania are in such shape as to be a source 
of legitimate pride in the present and hopefulness for the future, 
but it is my duty to add a note of warning. The volume of laws 
passed at the last session of the general assembly evidenced 
great care and a high degree of intelligence upon the part of the 
legislators responsible for them. They compare favorably with 
the legislation enacted by any legislative body in the history of 
the country, whether in nation or state. It is important that 
there shall be no retrogression, and no falling away from the 
standard then maintained. While the financial condition of the 
542 



APPENDIX 

state is prosperous and promising, and while the real needs of the 
government should be provided for without parsimony, there 
should be scrupulous care that none of its resources are mis- 
directed, or wasted in mere extravagance. Providence has so 
willed it that in the advocacy of those principles that now dom- 
inate the conduct of the national government, Pennsylvania has 
the leading position. In a certain sense then she may be properly 
said to represent the national view. In the present legislature, 
there is, to an extent never known before, a preponderance of 
those who are in accord with the principles to which expression 
is to be given in the broad field of national development. Wise 
men are steadied by the possession of power. With large majori- 
ties come great responsibilities. Those who are opposed to the 
principles you support will have their eyes turned to Pennsyl- 
vania, and will be quick to discover your mistakes, if any are 
made, and eager to take advantage of them. 

There is much merit in few laws and in few changes in those 
which have become known to the people. A wise chancellor of 
Sweden, Oxenstiern, who was largely responsible for the Swedish 
settlements along the Delaware, wrote in 1654: "Though time 
and variety of accidents may occasion some defects in old lawes, 
yett it is better they should be borne with than an inundation of 
new lawes to be lett in which causeth incertainty, ignorance, 
different expositions, and repugnancyes in the lawes, and are the 
parents of contention." A recent English writer, Anthony 
TroUope, has said: "The law is generally very wise and prudent." 

I am satisfied you will bear in mind these truths and so con- 
duct yourselves that the outcome of your deliberations and con- 
sultations shall prove Pennsylvania still to be what she was in 
the time of her philanthropic and far-seeing founder and has been 
in many fateful crises since, a beacon and an example to her sister 
states and to all men seeking to advance human welfare over the 
world. Samuel W. Pennypacker. 

"A." 

An Act 

Declaring the habitual 'publication and dissemination by newspapers, 
journals, periodicals, pamphlets or circulars of falsehood, defam- 
ation and scandal to he a public nuisance, and providing for the 
abatement thereof. 

Section I. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Repre- 
sentatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in General 

543 



APPENDIX 

Assembly met, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the 
same, That the habitual publication and dissemination by news- 
papers, journals, periodicals, pamphlets or circulars of falsehood, 
defamation and scandal, detrimental to the administration of 
public affairs, whether state, county or municipal, or injurious to 
the reputation and character of public officials, or of private per- 
sons, be declared to be a public nuisance. 

Section II. Any six persons, citizens of this commonwealth, 
may present a petition to the attorney general of the common- 
wealth, setting forth the designation and description of the publi- 
cation constituting such a public nuisance, the fact that it habit- 
ually publishes and disseminates falsehood, defamation and 
scandal, giving the particulars and details in at least three instances 
of false, defamatory or scandalous statements or representations 
so published, and further setting forth the special injury, if there 
be such injury. Thereupon, if in the judgment of the attorney 
general there shall appear to be a prima facie case estabHshed, 
requiring his intervention, it shall be his duty to file a biU in 
equity in the name of the commonwealth in the court of com- 
mon pleas of the county in which such pubfication has been made, 
setting forth the facts and prajdng for the abatement of the 
nuisance. 

Section III. Upon the trial of the cause, if the evidence shall 
show the habitual pubfication and dissemination of false, defama- 
tory or scandalous statements or representations, whether in the 
form of news, comment or illustration, it shall be the duty of the 
court to make a decree directing the suppression of the publica- 
tion of the newspaper or newspapers, journal or journals, periodi- 
cal or periodicals, pamphlet or pamphlets, circular or circulars, 
in whole or in part, as in its judgment may be necessary for 
the abatement of the nuisance. 

Section IV. The attorney general is hereby authorized 
upon filing vouchers with the auditor general to receive from the 
state treasury such sums as may be required for the costs and 
expenses of all such proceedings prosecuted by him. 

Section V. AU acts or parts of acts inconsistent herewith be 
and the same are hereby repealed. 



544 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GOVERNOR PENNYPACKER 

Annals of Phoenixville and Its Vicinity. 8vo., pp. 295. 1872. 

Rittenhouse's Orrery. Lossing's American Historical Record. 1873. 

A Councillor, Judge and Legislator of the Olden Time. Ldppincott's 
Magazine, April, 1874. 

Charlestown Township. Potter's American Monthly, January, 1875. 

Abraham and Dirck op den Graeff. Penn Monthly, September, 1875. 

Captain Joseph Richardson. Penn Monthly, February, 1876. 

The Pennypacker Reunion. 8vo., pp. 51. 1877. 

Colonel Samuel John Atlee. Penna. Mag., 1878. 

Mennonite Emigration to Pennsylvania. Penna. Mag., 1878. 

A General Index to the Enghsh Common Law Reports. Supplement. 
8vo., pp. 485. Philadelphia, 1879. 

The Settlement of Germantown and the Causes Which Led to It. Penna, 
Mag., 1880. 

James Abram Garfield. 8vo., pp. 8. 1881. 

A Noteworthy Book. Penna. Mag., 1881. 

Zionitischer Weyrauch's Hugel oder Myrrhen Berg. Bulletin of Library 
Company of Philadelphia. 1882. 

David Rittenhouse. Harper's Monthly, May, 1882. 

Recueil de diverses Pieces concernant la Pennsylvania. Penna. Mag., 
1882. 

Reports of Cases Decided in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. 4 vols. 
8vo. Philadelphia, 1882-1885. 

Historical and Biographical Sketches. 8vo., pp. 416. Philadelphia, 
1883. 

An Address at the Bicentennial Celebration of the Settlement of German- 
town, Pa., and the Beginning of German Emigration to America, 
October 6, 1883. 8vo., pp. 12. Philadelphia, 1883. (Translated into 
German and into Dutch by Dr. ScheflFer, of Amsterdam.) 

An Open Letter from Samuel W. Pennypacker to George William Curtis. 
8vo., pp. 8. Philadelphia, 1884. 

Address on "The State of Pennsylvania, Where the Constitution was 
Framed," in the Proceedings at a Dinner Given by the Citizens of 
Philadelphia to the Hon. John A. Kasson, October 13, 1887. Svo. 
Philadelphia, 1887. 

Breakfast to the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States 
in the American Academy of Music, September 15, 1887, by the Bar 
of Philadelphia. 8vo., pp. 61. Philadelphia, 1888. 

Banquet given by the Learned Societies of Philadelphia at the Amer- 
ican Academy of Music, September 17, 1887, closing the Ceremonies 
in Commemoration of the Framing and Signing of the Constitution 
of the United States. 8vo., pp. 86. Philadelphia, 1888. 

35 545 



APPENDIX 

The Quarrel between Christopher Sower, the Germantown Printer, 
and Conrad Beissel, Founder and Vorsteher of the Cloister at Ephrata. 
8vo., pp. 21. Philadelphia, 1888. 

The University of Pennsylvania in Its Relations to the State of Penn- 
sylvania. Svo., pp. 15. Philadelphia, 1891. 

The First IViayor of Philadelphia. Penna. Mag. Hist., XV, 344-345. 
1891. 

The Early Literature of the Pennsylvania Germans. Proc. of the Penn- 
sylvania German Society, Vol. II, 1892. 

The Keystone and Plymouth Rock, an Address at the Dinner of the 
New England Society of Pennsylvania, December 22, 1891, 8vo., 
pp. 10. Philadelphia, 1892. 

Twenty-sixth Pennsylvania Emergency Infantry, an Address at the 
Dedication, September 1, 1892, of the Monument to Commemorate 
the Services of the Regiment on the Battlefield of Gettysburg. 8vo., 
pp. 26. Philadelphia, 1892. 

Pennsylvania Colonial Cases. The Administration of Law in Penn- 
sylvania prior to A. D. 1700, as shown in the Cases Decided, and in 
the Court of Proceedings. 8vo., pp. 185. Philadelphia, 1892. 

The Pennypacker Pedigree. Philadelphia. (Fifty copies privately 
printed.) 

The Weekly Notes of Cases. 45 vols. 1875-1894. (Reporter for C. P. 
Nos. 2 and 3.) 

A PoUtical Fable. 8vo., pp. 7. Philadelphia, 1890. 

Congress Hall, an Address ... at the Last Session of the Court of 
Common Pleas No. 2 in Congress Hall, Philadelphia, September 16, 
1895. 8vo., pp. 34. Philadelphia, 1895. 

Hendrick Pannebecker, Surveyor of Lands for the Penns, 1674-1754, of 
Flomborn, Germantown and Skippack. 8vo., pp. 164. Philadelphia, 
1894. 

Joseph Rushng Whitaker, 1824-1895, and His Progenitors. A Memorial. 
8vo., pp. 32, 42. Philadelphia, 1896. 

The Pennsylvania Dutchman in Philadelphia. 8vo., pp. 13. Philadel- 
phia, 1897. 

Address on Memorial Day, May 30, 1898, before Colonel Frederick 
Taylor Post No. 19, G. A. R. 8vo., pp. 18. Philadelphia, 1898. 

The Descent of Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker, late President of the 
Netherlands Society of Philadelphia, Pa., from the Ancient Counts 
of Holland, with the Authorities in Proof. 8vo., pp. 25. Philadelphia, 
1898. 

Report of Cases in the Philadelphia License Court of 1901. In Curia 
Currrente Calamo Scribentur, 8vo., pp. 30. Philadelphia, 1901. 

The Settlement of Germantown, Pennsylvania, and the Beginning of 
German Emigration to North America. 8vo., pp. 310. Philadelphia, 
1899. 

The Pennsylvania Dutchman and Wherein He Has Excelled. 8vo., 
pp. 6. Philadelphia, 1899. 



546 



APPENDIX 

Valley Forge, An Address . . . before the Pennsylvania Society of 
Sons of the Revolution, June 18, 1898. 8vo., pp. 9. Philadelphia, 
1898. 
Pennsylvania and Its University. 8vo., pp. 11. Philadelphia, 1897. 
The Origin of the University of Pennsylvania in 1740. 8vo., pp. 23. 

Philadelphia, 1899. 
Address of the Honorable Samuel W. Pennypacker, Pennypacker's 

Mills, Pa., June 17, 1899. 8vo., pp. 8. 1899. 
The South African War in Nuce. 8vo., pp. 6. Philadelphia, 1900. 
Netherlands Society of Philadelphia Annual Banquets, 1892-1901. 

Addresses each year. 8vo. Philadelphia. 
Johann Gottfried Seelig and the Hymn Book of the Hermits of the 

Wissahickon. 8vo., pp. 7. Philadelphia, 1901. 
Three Letters upon the War in South Africa. 1. Its Cowardice. 2. Its 
Brutality. 3. Its Futihty. Printed in newspapers over the world 
and translated into the languages of the continent. 
VaUey Forge Orderly Book of General George Weedon. 8vo., pp. 323. 

New York, 1902. 
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. A Historical Parallel. 8vo. Phila- 
delphia, 1902. Several editions. 
The Capture of Stony Point. Oration ... at the Dedication of the 
New York State Park, July 16, 1902. 8vo., pp. 10. Philadelphia, 
1902. 
Speeches of the Hon. Matthew Stanley Quay. 8vo., pp. 200. Philadel- 
phia, 1901. 
Inaugural Address. 8vo., pp. 8. Harrisburg, 1903. 
Laws . . . Passed at the Session of 1903. 8vo., pp. 661. Harrisburg, 

1903. 
Vetoes. 8vo., pp. 162. Harrisburg, 1903. 
George Washington in Pennsylvania. 8vo., pp. 16. Harrisburg, 

1904. 
Address at Gettysburg upon the introduction of President Roosevelt. 

8vo., pp. 6. Harrisburg, 1904. 
Address upon Pennsylvania Day, August 20, 1904, at the Louisiana 

Purchase Exposition. 8vo., pp. 14. Harrisburg, 1904. 
Message of the Governor to the General Assembly, January 3, 1905. 

8vo., pp. 22. Harrisburg, 1905. 
Laws. . . . Passed at the Session of 1905. 8vo., pp. 697. Harrisburg, 

1905. 
Vetoes, pp. 217. Harrisburg, 1905. 

Address at the Memorial Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Legislature 
upon the death of Senator Matthew Stanley Quay. 8vo., pp. 13. 
Harrisburg, 1905. 
Speech ... at the American Academy of Music, October 18, 1905. Svo. 
Message of the Governor. 8vo., pp. 7. Harrisburg, 1906. 
Address ... at the Congress on Uniform Divorce Laws. 8vo., pp. 6. 
Harrisburg, 1906. 

547 



APPENDIX 

Laws . . . Passed at the Extraordinary Session of 1906. 8vo., pp. 128. 

Harrisburg, 1906. 
Message of the Governor. Svo., pp. 18. Harrisburg, 1907. 
The Library of the Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker, Catalogues. 6 vols. 

Svo. Philadelphia, 1905-8. 
Bebbers Township and the Dutch Patroons of Pennsylvania. 8vo., 

pp. 18. Philadelphia, 1907. 
Address at Antietam in the volume, "Pennsylvania at Antietam," 

page 23. Harrisburg, 1906. 
Speech in the Thirteenth Republican National Convention Nominating 

the Hon. Charles W. Fairbanks for the Vice Presidency. See Pro- 
ceedings, 1904. p. 173. 
A Fragment of the Chronicles of Nathan Ben Saddi. 4to., pp. 49. 

Philadelphia, 1904. 
Address at the Dedication of the State Capitol of Pennsylvania, October 

4, 1906. See volume on the State Capitol, p. 92. 
The High Watermark of the British Invasion of the Northern Colonies 

during the Revolutionary War. Svo. Penna. Mag., October, 1907. 
Anthony Wayne. An Address at the Dedication of the Equestrian 

Statue at Valley Forge. Svo., 48 pp. 1908. 
Introduction to Dr. Martin G. Brumbaugh's Works of Christopher 

Dock. Svo. Philadelphia, 1908. 
Introduction to Dr. Marion D. Learned's Life of Francis Daniel Pastorius. 

Svo. Philadelphia, 1908. 

The foregoing list of books and printed papers, addresses 
and other compositions of Governor Pennypacker was prepared 
by Mr. Albert Cook Myers, while Secretary of the Pennsylvania 
History Club, and printed in Volume I of the club's publications. 
Most of the following additions to the list have been taken from 
the bibliography printed as an appendix to "An Address Upon the 
Life and Services of Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker, Governor of 
Pennsylvania, President of the Historical Society of Pennsyl- 
vania. By Hampton L. Carson. DeUvered in the Hall of the 
Historical Society January 8, 1917." Pp. 125. With portrait. 

Charade, " Dramatic." Enacted at Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, December 

31, 1866. 
Brief, in re Right of the Twenty-sixth Pennsylvania Emergency Regiment 

to a monument at Gettysburg (Board of Commissioners of Gettysburg 

Monuments), Svo., pp. 9. Philadelphia, 1890. 
Pennypacker's Mills in Story and Song. (Typed.) Foho, pp. 205. 

Philadelphia, 1902. 
The Freedom of the Press: Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker's Message 

Approving the Bill in Restraint of its Liberty, and Charles Emory 

Snaith's Editorial in Protest. Svo., pp. 28-1. Philadelphia, 1903. 

548 



APPENDIX 

In re Application of William J. Byers for commutation of the sentence of 
death. 8vo., pp. 6. 1904. 

In re Application for the extension of the Charter Route of Royer's 
Ford Street Railway. 8vo., pp. 3. 

Orations on Lincoln by Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker and Colonel 
Alexander K. McClure, deUvered at a meeting of the Law Association 
of Philadelphia, held in the rooms of the Historical Society of Penn- 
sylvania, Febniary 12, 1909, in commemoration of the Centennial of 
the Birth of Abraham Lincoln. 8vo., pp. 28. Philadelphia, 1909. 

Address at the Formal Opening of the New Fireproof Building of the 
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, April 6, 1910. 24 pp. 

Pennsylvania in American History. 8vo., pp. 494. Philadelphia, 1910. 

The Desecration and Profanation of the Pennsylvania Capitol. 8vo., 
pp. 104. Philadelphia, 1911. 

Judicial Experience in Executive Office. An Address before the Maryland 
State Bar Association, June, 1911. 8vo., pp. 19. 

Joseph Richardson's Road: A Bit of Color from the Forgotten Past. 
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography for January, 1911, 
pp. 9. 

Pennsylvania. The Keystone. A Short History, 8vo., pp. 316. 
Philadelphia, 1914. 

Introduction to Hon. Hampton L. Carson's "Pedigrees in the Ownership 
of Law Books," Philadelphia: The Philobiblon Club, 1916. 

War and Christmas. (180 words. A thought for the Christmas season 
written by request in his last illness, and but a few weeks before his 
death, which occurred on September 2, 1916.) Collier's Weekly (New 
York City), issue of December 23, 1916. 



549 



INDEX 



Accident nearly terminates career, 203 
Achievements of administration as 

governor, 439 
Adamson, Thomas, introduced to Daniel 

Webster by author's father, 23 
Address at AndersonviUe, 402; at 
Chickamauga battlefield, 317; at 
dedication of capitol, 435; at dedi- 
cation of statue of Teedyuscung, 268; 
to voters of state urging Blaine's 
election in 1884. 188; at 200th 
anniversary of coming of Germans 
to German town, 148; before Can- 
statter Volksfest Verein, 240; before 
Sons of Revolution, 158; before 
New England Society of Pennsyl- 
vania, 1891, 230; urging Blaine's 
election, commented upon by Phila- 
delphia newspapers, 188; at Belle- 
fonte on the Curtin monument dedi- 
cation, 428; to the Republican 
national convention, 360; at Frank- 
lin and Marshall College, 305; at 
Gettysburg, 305, 352; at Hanover, 
396; to the Legislature, 291; at 
Neshaminy to Sons of Revolution, 
305 
Adventure with a runaway horse, 367 
Albert, heir to Belgian throne, visits 

America, 252 
Aldekerk observations and experiences, 

217 
Allen, William, Colonial Chief Justice, 

34 
Allentown Fair visited, 312 
Ambitions of mother of author, 151 
American Philosophical Society cele- 
brates 200th anniversary of Franklin's 
birth, 421 
Amsterdam acquaintances, observations 

and experiences, 216 
Amundsen, Roald, met in company 

with other Polar explorers, 496 
Ancestors of author, 17; fluent speakers 

and writers, 136 
Anderson, Dr. Benjamin S., 65 
Anderson, Dr. David F., teaches author 

chess, 39 
Anderson, Isaac, author's great-grand- 
father, 20 
Anderson, James, author's great-great- 
great-grandfather, 20 
Anderson, Dr. James, land purchase at 

Ardmore, 229 
Anderson, Dr. Joseph W., 229 
Anderson, Major Patrick, 20, 195, 322 
Anderson, Sarah, wife of Matthias 
Pennypacker and author's grand- 
mother, 19 



Andrews, W. R., 265, 391 

Annapolis appointment offered to 

author, 90 
Antietam battlefield memorials dedi- 
cated, 366, 437 
Antwerp experiences and observations, 

215, 248 
Appointive offices, filling the, as 

governor, 272 
Ardmore built on land of Dr. James 

Anderson, 229 
Armitage, Charles, 73 
Ashenfelter, 112, 145 
Ashenfelter, S. M., boyhood associate 

of author, 68 
Ashhurst, Richard L., 407 
Atlantic Monthly publishes "Ills of 

Pennsylvania," 260 
Atlee, Col. Samuel John, 148 
Audenried, Col. Joseph C, 376 
Auter, James, 410 
Autobiography, how written, 11; never 

revised by author, 12 

Baer, George F., 229, 424 

Baking Powder Bill, 289 

Balance between states and federal 

government, 279 
Bancroft Literary Society, members 
who became friends of author, 101 
Banneker Institute, 104 
Bar, admitted to, 114; leaders of, 119 
Baragoa observations and experiences, 

242 
Barker, Wharton, 124, 175, 178, 186 
Barnes, William, 430 
Bartilotte, Nichola, tried for murder, 

236 
Basle observations and experiences, 

220 
Bavis, Mary A., 49 
Bear protection bill veto, 289 
Beaver, General James A., 229, 418 
Beaver, James A., nominated for 

governor, 187 
Beeber, Dimner, 339 
Beitler, Abraham M., 127 
Beitler, Alderman David, 127 
Beitler, Colonel Lewis E., 247, 313 
Bell imprint collection, 160 
Bell, John C, 246 
Berry, William H., elected state 

treasurer, 398 
Bevan, John, author's Welsh ancestor 

of royal blood, 21 
Bible of author's great-great-great- 
grandmother's grandfather, anecdote, 
168 
Bicycle case decision, 252 

551 



INDEX 



Biddle, A. Sydney, 123 

Biddle, George W., 114, 119 

Billew (Boileau), Miss Caroline, 77 

Bingham, General Henry, dinner in 
his honor, 371 

Binney, Horace, remembered by author, 
118 

Birthplace, 31 

Bishop, Annie M., 214 

Bispham, George Tucker, declines 
judgeship, 310 

Black Hand activities, 410 

Blaine, Col. Ephraim, 167 

Blaine, James G., 180, 187, 213 

Blankenburg, Rudolph, 176, 185 

Board of Education activities of author, 
193; election of president, 202 

Boarding experiences at Third Street 
near Callowhill, 112 

Boer War comments, 225, 256 

Bookkeeper for oil company, 114 

Books, collecting, 160; exchange of 
rare, 167; sale of, 394; farmers' 
auctions, 162; prices paid for rare, 147 

Books of author's boyhood, 36; studied 
by author at Grovemont Seminary, 
69 

Bosbyshell, Col. Oliver C, 158 

Bosworth Field visit, 250 

Botanizing trips of author while a boy, 
41 

Bowen, A. Harry, 254 

Boyd, Peter, 397 

Bradley, Rev. Joel E., 67 

Bradley, Judge Joseph P., 471 

Bradley, Col. Walter T., 308 

Bradley, William, H., 69 

Breckinridge, Senator John C, of 
Kentucky, 93 

Bregy, F. A., secures judicial appoint- 
ment, 196 

Brewster, B. H., member of bar, 115 

Brewster, Judge F. Carroll, 116 

Bridges, county, 524 

British Museum visit, 249 

Broek observations, 216 

Brooke, Charles W., 119 

Brooke, General John R., nearly 
selected for governor, 264; a Gettys- 
burg veteran, 493 

Broomall, John M., 82 

Broomall, Virginia Earl, 69 

Brotherhead, William, 166 

Brotherhead's comment on biblio- 
maniacs, 170 

Brown, David Paul, 119 

Brown, J. Hay, comments on supposed 
candidacy of governor for Supreme 
Court, 338 

Brown, William M., lieutenant gover- 

*■* nor, 271, 354 

Brown's, John, attempt, news comes to 
Phcenixville, 80 

Brumbaugh, M. G., asked to urge 
Shumaker appointment, 457 

Bryce, James, characterized, 488; liter- 
ary criticisms, 489 

552 



Buckeye Blacksmith, the, a stump 
speaker and daguerreotypist, 46 

Budd, Henry 127 

Bullitt, John C, 126, 382 

Bunn, WiUiam M., 371 

Burgin, Dr. Herman, 158 

Burgin, Horace, 158 

Burleigh, 51 

Burns, John, monument at Gettys- 
burg, 305 

Butler, Gen. Benj. F., moves alithor's 
admittance to practice before U. S. 
Supreme Court, 135; saves Maryland 
for Union, 87 

Cabinet of the governor, 273 

Cadwalader, John, 254 

Cadwaladei, Jr., John, 114, 431 

Cadwalader, Richard M., 158, 239, 
384 

Calhoun, Alfred R., a prominent 
G. A. R. man, 102; political career, 
103 

Cameron, Simon, 103, 171, 196 

Campaign contribution in 1902, 265 

Campaign for governor, 268; speeches, 
extemporaneous, 269 

Cannon, Joseph G., as a presiding 
officer, 359; characterization, 468 

Capp, Thomas H., 404 

Capitol — built without depleting treas- 
ury, 434; contracts attacked, 432; 
contract attack blunder in tactics, 
433; cornerstone laid, 350; costs 
compared with other states, 524; 
dedication, 435; dedicatory address 
by governor, 435; expenditures de- 
fended by governor, 432; expendi- 
tures opened to newspaper editors, 
434; furnishing attack, 433; investi- 
gation and prosecution, 440; itself 
an answer to critics of builders, 434; 
scandal, author bids it farewell, 435 

Carnegie, Andrew, 367, 375, 448 

Carnegie Library at State College 
dedicated, 367 

Carpenter, Major J. Edward, 158 

Carpenter, Samuel, 21 

Carson, Hon. Hampton L., 13, 94, 145, 
175, 273, 331, 460 

Carty, Jerome, 101 

Cassatt, A. J., and horse racing, 270 

Cassel, Daniel K., his history of 
Mennonites, 147 

Cassidy, Lewis C, 119 

Catto, O. v., 194 

Cavin, Samuel E., 208 

Chambrun, Marquis de, 134 

Chamounix visited, 222 

Charities appropriations, 524 

Chattanooga battlefield visited, 316 

Checkers, the author's progress at 
game, 39 

Chester County Republicanism, fiftieth 
anniversary, 395 

Chew, Major David S. B., 492 

Chillon, castle of, visited, 223 



INDEX 



Chinese concessions basis of a company 
incorporated through author, 125 

Chrisman, Robert R., 114 

Christian Science charter refused, 251 

Chronicles of Nathan Ben Saddi pub- 
lished, 362 

City Troop, 364 

Civil Service problem, 291 

Civil Service Reform Association 
formed, 179 

Clark, Champ, 245 

Clark, Clarence H., 239 

Clay, Henry, supported by author's 
father for President, 48; writes a 
letter to author's father, 48 

Cleveland, Grover, 134 

Clients, relations with lawyer in former 
times. 111; early, 123 

Clover Club dinners, 234 

Coal and Iron Police condemned, 349; 
work reviewed and law criticised, 
530 

Coal Oil Johnnie, 115 

Coal Strike of 1906, 420; activities of 
state constabulary, 423; proclama- 
tion of May 2d, 422 

Coal tax urged, 534 

Coates, Moses, 34 

Cochran, Thomas, 186 

Coffman, Doctor Isaac Z., 39 

Colesberry, Col. Alexander P., 184, 253 

Colket, Coffin, 204 

Colket, Mary Pennypacker, 204 

Collier's Weekly prints a poem, 424 

Collis, Chas. H. T., as soldier and 
politician, 173 

Cologne observations and experiences, 
218 

Comets of 1858 and 1860 portents of 
war, 80 

Commissions for executive work de- 
plored, 536 

Committee of 100 organized in 1880, 185 

Commonwealth vs. Tierney decision, 228 

Congress Hall restored, 245; the court 
room in which author presided as 
judge, 206; ceiling falls, 238; courts 
move from, 245 

Congress of Authors at the 1876 
Centennial, 148 

Conrad, Judge Henry C, 136 

Conspiracy discovered by Record, 325 

Constabulary organizd, 381; recom- 
mendation for organization, 532; 
stop a prize fight, 426 

Constitutional centennial celebration, 
133 

Contempt of court, limitation of, to 
acts committed in court absurd, 213 

Converse, John H., incident of, offered 
Chicago clerkship, 159 

Conway, Jesse, 81 

Cook, Joel, 101 

Cooke, Jay, 75 

Copperheads, The, 84, 97 

Comwallis' surrender, new facts as to, 
223 



Corporation charters, governor takes 
active interest, 285; outcry on atti- 
tude, 286 

Coudon, Henry, 56; Joseph, 56, 76- 
Cecil, 56 

Coudon, Joseph, 76 

County bridges recommendations, 524 

Courts move from Congress Hall to 
City Hall, 245 

Coventry visited, 225-250 

Coxe, Brinton, president of Historical 
Society, 156 

Coxe, Dr. Daniel, 156 

Craig, Matthew, an American manu- 
facturer in Cuba, 243 

Crawford, G. L., rents office space to 
author, 115 

Crawford, Jack, 419 

Crefeld observations and experiences, 
217 

Crimes created too frequently by 
statute, 208 

Criminal cases, satisfactory memory of, 
207 

Criminal practice, refusal to engage in, 
129 

Crittenden, John J., of Kentucky, 93 

Croker, Richard, fellow voyager,"227 

Cruikshank, Montgomery county 
school superintendent issues teach- 
ing certificate to author, 76 

Cuba, proclamation of McKinley a 
mistake, 472; visited with daughter 
in 1894, 242 

Curtin, Dr. Roland G., 113 

Curtin monument dedicated at Belle- 
fonte, 428 

Curtis, George William, president 
National Civil Service Reform Asso- 
ciation, 179, 474 

Cutaiar, pardon refused, 332; visited 
in cell, 333 

Cuyler, Theodore, described by Samuel 
Dickson, 120 

Dairy and food division achievements, 

528; license receipts, 529 
Dare, William S., boss at iron works 

in Phoenixville, 33 
DarUng, J. Vaughan, 117 
Darlington, Bishop, as a Shriner, 418; 

portrays author as idealist and 

radical, 12 
Darwin, Charles, corresponded with 

author, 15 
Darwin, Sir George, marries relative of 

author, 149 
Daughters accompany author on Euro- 
pean trip, 247 
Dauphin County court appointment, 

286, 404 
Davies, William T., 183 
Davis, Jennie M., 214 
Davis, William Morris, 90 
Death of author's brother John, 43; 

of author's father, 60; of judge's 

mother, 253 

553 



INDEX 



Death penalty an anachronism, 209 

Dechert, Robert P., 158 

Dedication of battlefield memorials, 
316; of memorial to Tenth Pennsyl- 
vania Regiment dead, 358 

DeKay, Drake, 92 

Delaney, Captain John C, 272, 348 

Delaware channel appropriation, 396; 
brought to attention of Legislature, 
537 

Delaware governor sends an improperly 
drawn up requisition, 315 

Delegate to the 1904 Republican 
convention, 358 

Democrats endorse author for judge, 
202 ; make political capital of special 
session, 411 

Denithorne, Richard, 82 

Department of Health created, 380 

Department of Public Records work, 
527 

Departmental reports, economies in 
printing, 525 

"Desecration and Profanation of the 
Pennsvlvania State Capitol," 432 

Dick, Franklin A., 185 

Dickens, Charles, impressions of, 148 

Dickson, Samuel, 127, 153, 339 

Diffenderffer, F. R., 229 

Dinner given by newspaper men to 
governor, 438; to newspaper men, 
Jan. 3, 1907, 437 

Discipline enforced by author as a 
teacher, 77; of author's boyhood, 36 

Disston, Hamilton, 125, 174 

Divorce congress, commissioners ap- 
pointed, 415; initiated, 415; recom- 
mendations, 416; propositions not 
endorsed by Pennsylvania, 417, 439 

Dixon, Dr. Samuel G., 284, 380, 463 

Dobson, John R., 100 

Dock, Christopher, 147, 164 

Dodge, Henry C, 86 

Dordrecht Confession of Faith, 19 

Dorr, Doctor, 22 

Dos Passos, John R., 183 

Dotterer, Henry S., appointed private 
secretary, his death, 283 

Dougherty, Daniel, 99, 115, 128 

Douglass, WiUiam, as governor of 
Massachusetts, 280 

Dow, Neal, visits author's father, 50 

Dramatic performance participated in 
by author as a boy, 54 

Dreer, Ferdinand J., 239 

Driver, Alfred, 59 

Drug clerk experience of author, 65 

Durham Iron Works, 60 

Durham, Israel W-, 273, 386, 450 

Dutch, ancestry of author, 17; lan- 
guage successfully studied, 145 

Dwyer, John P., 374 

Earle, Geo. H., comments on Suprerne 
Court episode, 444; expresses his 
appreciation, 455; urges acceptance 
of Supreme Court nomination, 443 

554 



Economies and reforms in office of 
governor, 284 

Edwards, Kate, murder case, 372 

Egle, Dr. William H., 229 

Egolf, Gus, the Norristown dealer from 
whom old books, etc., were obtained, 
162 

Eighth Pennsylvania Reserves' monu- 
ment at Antietam, 437 

Elkin, John P., elected to Supreme 
Court, 345; sought governorship 
without success, 262 

EUswoith, Colonel Elmer E., 92 

Emery, Jr., Lewis, 187 

Emery, Lewis R., nominated by inde- 
pendents for governor, 433 

Eminent domain, right of, railroads' 
reform urged, 533; right taken from 
water companies, 379 

Empire Hook and Ladder Company, 57 

English ancestry of author, 17 ; baggage 
handling system breaks down, 226; 
common law reports, preparation of 
third volume, 126; estimate of char- 
acter by author, 247; channel, near 
collision in, 248 

Enterprise National Bank failure, 397; 
state deposits recovered, 421 

Ephrata imprint collection, 160 

Equity bill against a municipal loan 
case, 253 

Etheridge, Emerson, 92 

Euen, Doctor David, 39 

Evans, Nelson F., 174 

Evil eye, 68 

Executive building recommended to be 
made state library, 528 

Executive mansion, opinion of the 
governor, 274 

Executor in estate of Joseph R. 
Whitaker, 246; for estate of Mary 
Pennypacker Colket, 204 

Eyre, T. Larry, 320 

Fager, Doctor John H., 290 

Fairbanks, Vice President, 395, 445, 
463 

Fairmount Engine Company, 56 

Family of author moves to Harrisburg, 
274; to Philadelphia, 55; settle on 
Chestnut near Eighteenth, 57 

Farr, Chester N., 101, 128 

Farr, Edward B., commends adminis- 
tration, 467 

Fee system in state departments ought 
to be abolished, 536 

Federation of Women's Clubs ad- 
dressed, 315 

Fell, D. Newlin, 200, 276, 442 

Financial standing of state in 1905, 623 

Fisher, William Righter, 128 

Fisher, George Harrison, 127 

Fitler, Edwin H., Quay's estimate of 
him, 201 

Five O'clock Club dinners, 234 

Flag pole incident on "Tunnel Hill, 
author's confession, 82 



INDEX 



Fleitz F. W., 483 

Flemming, Hugh S., 183 

Flomborn observations and experi- 
G11C6S 210 

Flood, Col. Ned Arden, 271 

Food of author's boyhood, 40 

Forestry recommendations, 526 

Foss, C>TUs D., commends administra- 
tion, 441 

Fourth Pennsylvania Reserves' monu- 
ment at Antietam, 437 

Fow, John H., 414 

Fox, George, birth place visited, 251 

Franklin, celebration of two hundredth 
anniversary of birth, 421; claims as 
a founder of institutions disallowed, 
162; estimate of work, 161; imprint 
collection, 160 

Franklin and Marshall College com- 
mencement address, 305 

Franklin visited, reception, 313 

Fredericksburg battlefield memorial 
dedication, 430 

French admiral greeted by the judge, 
204 

French Creek, author's early place of 
recreation, 34 

French Huguenots, ancestry of author, 
17 

French studied by author under Prof. 
Saunders, 59 

Fuller, Frank M., 266, 387 

Funk, Henry, 164 

Furness, Horace Howard, character- 
ized, 239 

Games of author's boyhood, 37 

Gantvoort, Doctor Arnold, 235 

Garden, Mary, has a talk with the 
author, 472 

Garfield visited by Philadelphia delega- 
tion, 181, 182 

Geiger, Dr. Henry, 55 

Geist, J. W. M., 183 

Geneva observations and experiences, 
220 

German studied in order to read a 
Pastorius manuscript, 144 

Germans, ancestry of author, 17; 
bestow honors on author, 149 

Germantown anniversary, 314 

Gettysburg, address at dedication of 
John Burns monument, 305; address 
by President Roosevelt, 352; author 
made an address, 15; 1905 encamp- 
ment of National Guard inspected, 
362; 1906 encampment of National 
Guard inspected, 432; battle experi- 
ence, 94 

Ghosts in Mont Clare, 63 

Gilbert, Lyman D., thanks governor, 451 

Gobin, General J. P. S., displaces 
General Miller, 378 

Gorcum, in Holland, place of origin of 
name of Pannebakker, 17 

Gordon, James Gay, 246 

Gordon, John B., the rebel general, 95 



Governor, 261 ; names under considera- 
tion for in 1902, 263 

Governor Pennypacker launched, 311 

Gowen, Frankhn B., 205 

Graduation at Law School of the 
University, 114 

Graham, George S., 196 

Grammar as studied in boyhood of 
author, 45 

Grand Army of the Republic experi- 
ence of author, 104 

Grant, Elizabeth D., 214 

Grant, General Frederick D., 376, 457 

Grant, Gen. U. S., 15; opinion of 
author as to his merits as soldier 
and President, 174-175 

Gratz, Simon, 192, 197 

"Greater Pittsburgh," 413 

Greater Pittsburgh bill passed, 294 

Green, Barney, 44 

Grier, W. A. M., 177 

Griest, I. W., 273 

Griffen, John, 90 

Groome, John C, 284, 364, 381 

Grovemont Seminary established in 
author's birthplace, 68 

Gubernatorial campaign of 1882, 186 

Haarlem experiences, 215 

Haas, Job, first man convicted of first 
degree murder in new City Hall, 235 

Hagert, Henry S., 122 

Hague, The, experiences and observa- 
tions, 215 

Haldeman, Col. Horace L., 313 

Hale, Edward Everett, declines capitol 
dedication invitation, 459; writes of 
inaugural address, 448 

Hancock, a general with whom author 
had relations, 15 

Hanover cavalry battle memorial dedi- 
cated, 396 

Harcourt's cavalry, 27 

Hardware store experience of author, 
76 

Hare, John I. Clark, as president 
judge of Common Pleas No. 2, 199; 
memorial meeting of bar, 407 

Harlan, E. S., a fellow law student, 108 

Harmar, James Lanman, 118 

Harris, Joseph S., 153 

Harrisburg Home Week, 396 

Harrison, President Benjamin, how he 
impressed author, 241; anecdote, 187 

Harrison, C. C, Provost of the Uni- 
versity, 6, 153 

Harrity, WiUiam F., 202 

Hart, Albert Bushnell, 474 

Hartranft, Governor John F., major 
general, 87; established National 
Guard, 307 

Hartshorne, Doctor Henry, 55 

Haslibacher Hymn, 139 

Hastings, Governor, 269, 350 

Hathaway, Loved, earliest playmate of 
author, 34 

Hawkins, Col. Alexander Le Roy, 358 

555 



INDEX 



Hay, John, estimate of him as Secretary 
of State, 255 

Hayes-Tilden electoral dispute, 89 

Hays, Dr. I. Minis, 422 

Heidelberg sights, 219 

Heilig, Mrs., author's first teacher, 33 

Hempstead, O. G., an early political 
friend, 172 

Henderson, John J., 287 

Herman, John Armstrong, 384 

Hermits of Wissahickon song book, 
anecdote, 168 

Hertogenbosch observations and experi- 
ences, 217 

Heustis, Charles H., 434 

Heydrick, Christopher, a Schwenk- 
f elder, 313 

Heyer, Frederick, 115 

Hickman, John, Chester County con- 
gressman of pre-war days, 81 

Hildeburn, Charles R., active in His- 
torical Society, 157, 239 

Hirst Lucas, an eccentric member of the 
bar, 129 

Historical Society of Pennsylvania, ap- 
propriation secured for, 155; ground 
broken for new building, 351 ; author 
elected member, 1872, 155; presided 
over, bv author, 15 

Hollingsworth, S. S., 118 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 108 

Hopewell Furnace, home of author's 
maternal grandfather, 25 

Horseback riding at Roosevelt's inaugu- 
ral, 377 

Hospital appropriations should be 
systematized, 524 

Houck, Henry, as a public speaker, 
304 

Houston, Samuel F., 153 

Houston, Wilham C, 158 

Howard, Gen. O. O., 15 

Howard Hospital, 57 

Huey, Sanuel B., 202 

Hughes, Charles E., appointment to 
Supreme Court commented upon, 
337; as a speaker, 484; at University 
Day, 482 

Hughes, Colonel, 74 

Hughes, Doctor Wm. E., 46 

Huston, Joseph F., the capitol architect, 
437 

Hutchinson, George, 272 

Inaugural address outline, 281 
Inaugural as governor, 276 
Inaugural, time of, criticised, 290 
Inauguration of President Roosevelt, 

376 
Indian relic collecting, 159 
Indian relics discovered at Johnsonville, 

Tenn., 320 
Ingersoll, Charles, 97 
Ingersoll, Joseph R., 110 
Ingersoll, Robert G., 177 
Institute of teachers at Trappe, 

attended by author, 77 

556 



International Exposition at St. Louis, 

commission, 363 
International Peace Congress address, 

comment, 446 
In^nncibles, a parading organization, 

183 
Irish League meeting in the Academy 

of Music, 366 
"Issues of the Press of Pennsylvania," 

158 
Ivins, Aaron, principal of Northwest 

Grammar School, 58 

Jacobs, John, 63; Benjamin, 63 

Jacobs, Michael W., 287 

Jamestown Tercentenary Exposition 
brought to the attention of the 
legislature, 542 

Japan's war with Russia, comments, 255 

Jefferson, Joseph, met by author, 240 

Jefferson Medical College, 61 

Jenkins, Howard M., 179, 186 

Jenkins, Theodore F., 241 

Jennings, Col., commander of Emer- 
gency Regiment in which author was 
private, 94, 96 

Jerman, Thomas, master of James 
Anderson, 20 

Jerry, the dog associated with author's 
boyhood, 35 

Johnson, Andrew, 104 

Johnson, John G., commends vetoes, 
441; esteemed by author as leader 
of Philadelphia bar, 116; thanks 
governor for Judge Ferguson's ap- 
pointment, 459; writes an apprecia- 
tion of the author as judge, 205 

Johnson, Governor William F., %d3it8 
author's father, 50 

Jones, J. Levering, 153 

Jordan, John W., 158 

Jordan, Jr., John, active in Historical 
Society, 157 

Josephs, Samuel, 186 

Judge, 194; preparation for office of,. 
198 

Judges' salary bill, 293 

Judicial decisions, methods of forming, 
199 

Justice, administration of, 208 

Justices of the peace, new rules for 
appointment, 358 

Keebler, Godfrey, 240 

Keen, Gregory B., 59 

Keith, George, 21 

Kenilworth Castle visited, 226 

Kensington, author made pills in, 16 

Ker, William W., 128 

Kerwin, M., praises acts of governor, 

455 
Keyser, Elizabeth, 512 
Keyser, Dr. Peter Dirck, 235 
Kew Gardens, visit, 249 
Kilgore, Damon Y., 120 
Kimberton School, attended by author's 

mother, 34 



INDEX 



Kinsey, John L., 193 

Kirkpatiick, Hon. W. S., 133 

Kittera, Anna, a fellow boarder at 
Foster's, 112 

Knox, Philander C, 264, 276, 353, 356, 
372, 445, 453. 465, 472 

Koecker, Dr. Leonard R., 100 

Kratz, H. W., 78 

Kriegsheim observations and experi- 
ences, 218 

Kuchler's Roost visited, 299 

Kunkel, George, 287 

Liambdin, A. C, notices Ledger article, 
464 

Lambert, Major William H., 174, 302 

Lane ancestry of author, 21 

Lane, David H., 264, 343, 445, 462 

Lane, Mary, author's great-grand- 
mother, 21 

Law Academy politics, 117; presided 
over by author, 15 

Law, methods of learning, 110 

Law practice, beginnings, 115; financial 
returns, 123 

Law student, at University of Pennsyl- 
vania, 113; experience, 78 

Law students in office of author, 128; 
associated with author, 107 

Lea, Henry C, 175, 185 

Leach, Colonel J. Granville, 113, 158 
282, 302 

Lecompton Constitution, 81 

Le Conte, Dr. Robert, surgeon general, 
311 

Lecturers on law at the University 
while author was a student, 113 

Lee, General Charles, 27 

Lee, Gen. Fitzhugh, entertained at 
Executive mansion, 379; writes of 
Jamestown Exposition, 450 

Lee, General Stephen D., 418 

Lee, Senator James W., 183, 186 

Legal education, cost of, 114 

Legislative expert recommended, 636 

Legislature of 1905, 369 

Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition 
at Portland, Ore., brought to atten- 
tion of legislature, 542 

Lewis, Jr., Lawrence, 127, 151 

License court, comments on, 257 

Life insurance readjustments attempt- 
ed, 430 

Lincoln, assassination, 100; body view- 
ed in Independence Hall, 101; 
first President with whom author 
had relations, 15; visit to Philadel- 
phia in 1861, 83; ancestor of, 47 

Lind, Jenny, tickets for concert bought 
by Joseph Whitaker, 26 

Literary societies, convention of city, 
104 

Lloyd, Horace, 73 

Lockwood, E. Dunbar, 175, 186 

Lodge, Henry Cabot, 421 

Logan, James, 162 

Logue, Mrs., murder case, 330 



London observations and experiences, 

224, 249 
Long, Isaac S., champion corn grower, 

395 
Loud, Edward C, 60 
Louisiana Purchase Exposition, report 

on the Pennsylvania Commission, 

542 
Louvre visited, 223 
Loyal Legion, 116 
Lund, Oliver C, 76 
Lynch, Thomas J., 304 

McAfee, Robert, 273, 389 

MacAIister, James, 192, 239 

McCall, George, 106 

McCall, Peter, in whose office author 
studies law, 106 

McCarthy, Judge Henry J., 253 

McClellan's visit to the Sanitary Com- 
mission Fair, 99 

McClure, Agnes, one of author's 

McClure, Alexander K., 428, 446 

McCoUum, Chief Justice, his Supreme 
Court experience and death, 314 

McConkey, Senator E. K., 348 

McCreary, George D., 57 

McCullogh, Johnnie, 34 

McDowell, General, 92 

McFarland, J. Horace, presents photo- 
graph of Roosevelt as a wood chop- 
per, 459 

Mcllvaine, Judge John A., 323 

McKay, David, 165 

McKee, I. D., 186 

McKim, Miller, 51 

McLaughlin, John, 175 

McManes, James, as political boss, 176; 
through interest in Mitchell supports 
author, 201 

McMichael, Judge Charles B., 257 

McMichael, Colonel "William, 183 

McMichael, Mayor Morton, 183 

McMuUen, Billy, 56 

McMurtrie, Richard C, 117, 119 

McNichol, Senator James P., 369 

McQuade, Mickey, 44 

McVeagh, proprietor of the "Mansion 
House" during author's boyhood, 47 

McVeagh, Wayne, as a boy encouraged 
by author's father, 47; appointed 
Garfield's attorney general, 178 

Mack, Connie, characterization, 481 

Magee, Christopher, 186 

Manheim rose festival address, 385 

Mann, William B., 119 

Mapes, George E., 186 

Marken observations and experiences, 

216 
Marshall, Charles, 158 
Marshall, Frank E., 167 
Martin, David, appointed msurance 

commissioner, 387 
Martin, John C, an early political 

associate, 172 

557 



INDEX 



Martyr Book of Mennonites, 163 

Masonic degrees conferred on author 
"at eight," 253 

Mauvais Pas traversed, 222 

Medicines of author's boyhood illnesses, 
42 

Medico-Chirurgical College, 292 

Meeting of descendants of Patrick 
Anderson, 229 

Melon Street case, 241 

Members of Young Men's Literary 
Union, 73 

Mennonites, literature in writer's 
library, 161; Martyr Book, 163 

Mer de Glace visited, 221 

Meredith, William M., 118 

Meschianza dance music discovered, 
158 

Message to special session of legislature, 
407; to the legislature of 1905, 523 

MifHin, Lloyd, corresponded with 
author, 15; declines Historical So- 
ciety invitation, 465; a poem, 139 

Miles, General Nelson E., 497 

Military service as private in Emer- 
gency Force, 93 

Miller, Major General Charles, 312, 378 

Miller, E. Spencer, 113 

Miller, Justice, speech on a crisis in 
American history, 130 

Miller, Justice Samuel F., 130 

Mitchell, James T., comments on 
refusal to pardon Cutaiar, 333; 
elected to Supreme Court, 196; 
writes of the Ledger article, 465 

Mitchell, John I., 185 

Mitchell, Major S. B. Wylie, 116 

Mitchell, Dr. S. Weir, as trustee of 
University, 153; commends appoint- 
ment of Le Conte, 440; discusses 
literature with author, 154; not 
favorably impressed by Roosevelt, 477 

Money, in politics, 181 ; troubles of the 
war, 90 

Monnikendam visit, 216 

Mont Alto tuberculosis camp in- 
spected, 306 

Mont Clare, given this name by 
Bayard Taylor, 52; home of author's 
family after death of father, 61; 
home of Joseph Whitaker, 26 

Montgomery, Thomas Lynch, appointed 
State Librarian, 284 

Moody, Col. Samuel, 309, 447 

Moore Hall bought by author's mother, 
203 

Moore, J. Hampton, 428 

Moore, William, 203 

Morrell, Edward D., 377 

Morris, Judge Benjamin, 33 

Morris, P. Pemberton, 113 

Mount Carmel coal strike riot, 423 

Mount Gretna encampment of Third 
Brigade inspected, 307 

Mount Vernon, author as delegate to 
National Convention, Pennsylvania 
Society Sons of the Revolution, 234 

558 



Moyamensing Hose Company, 56 

Mover. William W., 174 

Mullen, John H., 46 

Muller, Frederick, of Amsterdam, 217 

Mullin, 44 

Munson, C. La Rue, 415 

Murphy, Robert K., 427 

Myers, Albert Cook, 147 

"My Mother" — a poem, 138 

Mystery of young insurance clerk, 125 

Name Pennypacker, meaning of, 17 

National Republican League, aims of, 
175; extends over state, 183; organ- 
ized in Philadelphia, 175; plank 
inserted by author in platform of, 
180; sends delegates to Convention 
of 1880, 176 

Negro question, 401 

Neighbors of author's family on Chest- 
nut Street, 57 

Neshaminv address to Sons of Revolu- 
tion, 305 

Netherlands Society of Philadelphia 
formed, 235 

New Jersey, a few of author's ancestors 
came from, 16 

Newspaper, comments on legislative 
session of 1905, 380; restrictions 
should be made more severe, 538; 
re-enactment of legislation, 440; 
repeal of legislation, 439; editors 
refuse to examine books on capitol 
expenditures, 434; abuse, injurious 
effects of, 302; (see Salus-Grady 
newspaper bill) 

New Year message, 405 

Nicholson, Col. John P., 362, 384 

Nomination for governor received, 267 

Norris, A. Wilson, 103, 195 

Norris, S. Henry, 57 

Norristown Court House dedicated, 351 

North American exercises its fancy over 
Pennsylvania's share of St. Louis 
Exposition, 365; first collision as 
governor, 283; frankly character- 
ized, 146; is criticised in message of 
1905, 539 

North Carolina governor in dispute 
about a requisition, 316 

North Pole, discovery of, included in 
author's life-span, 15 

Northwest Grammar School attended 
by author, 58 

Notebook records of reading begun 
1863, 145 

Oakman, Elizabeth, 34 

O'Barr, Felix, 76 

Oberholtzer, C. Herman, 77 

O'Brien, Jack, in a pugilistic pose with 

Mr. Cannon, 469 
O'Brien, J. Duross, 107 
O'Brync, John, 122 
Observations on the French people, 223; 

on the origin of childish games and 

words, 38 



INDEX 



Oliver, George T., 356, 454, 461 

Oliver, Harry W., 185 

Olmsted, Marlin E., 276 

Op den Graeff, Abraham, 28, 30 

Opinions of newspaper correspondents 

on newspaper restriction, 299 
Orchard Knob battlefield memorial, 403 
Organization of state government 

under author's administration, 303 
"Origin of Species," appeared during 

life of author, 15 
Otterson, James. 78 
Outerbridge, Albert A., 127 
Oxenstiern, Chancellor of Sweden — 

comments on legislation, 543 

Page, S. Davis, a fellow law student, 
109 

Page, William Byrd, 109 

Pannebakker, Jan, a Dutch connection, 
249 

Pannebecker, Hendrick, author's great- 
great-great-grandfather, 17 

Pannebecker, Jacob, author's great- 
great-grandfather, 17 

Paoli, scene of militia drills, 83 

Pardee, Ario, 103, 177 

Paris, Comte de, 15, 150 

Parker, Alton B., 430, 458 

Parrish, Dr., Joseph 55 

Passos, John R. Dos, 183 

Pastorius, Fiancis Daniel, 144 

Patriotic Society memberships and 
offices 239 

Pattison', Robert E., 186, 268, 362 

Paxson, Justice Edward M., 133, 
228, 262, 449, 471 

Pearson, Gen. Samuel, interviews 
Roosevelt, 486 

Peary, Robert E., at the New York 
Pennsylvania Society, 490; describes 
polar travel, 491; met in company 
with other polar explorers, 496 

Peck. William H., 73 

Penn Club, 75 

Pennepacker, John B., sketches and 
incidents, 499 

Pennsylvania Club of Washington 
entertains the governor, 417 

Pennsylvania College of Medicine, 61 

"Pennsylvania Colonial Cases," elab- 
orated from law academy address, 
230; written, 128 

Pennsylvania Company for the Insur- 
ance of Lives and Granting Annuities 
dinners, 234 

Pennsylvania, cruiser, silver service, 
399 

Pennsylvania Day at St. Louis Exposi- 
tion, 364 

Pennsylvania Dutch, ignorance of, 204 

Pennsylvania German Society organ- 
ized, 229 

Pennsylvania, people a blended race, 
16 

Pennsylvania Society of the Colonial 
Dames organized, 234 



Pennsylvania Society of New York 
entertains governor, 328 

Pennsylvania Society Sons of the Revo- 
lution organized, 158; list of organ- 
izers, 158 

" Penny-a-milers' " excursions a succeaa, 
434 

Pennypacker, Charles H., 136 

Pennypacker, Elijah F., 80, 136 

Pennypacker, Gen. Galusha, his mili- 
tary achievements, 88 

Pennypacker, Henry C, brother of 
author, owns Wernwag clock, 32 

Pennypacker, Isaac Anderson, author's 
father, 22 

Pennypacker, Isaac R., as a writer, 136; 
wrote introduction, 13 

Pennypacker, James L., brother of 
author, 474 

Pennypacker, Matthias, author's great- 
grandfather, 17 

Pennypacker, Matthias, the younger, 
author's grandfather, 18 

Pennypacker, meaning of name, 17 

Pennypacker, men of family who had 
been suggested for governo,266 

Pennypacker, Dr. Nathan A., 136 

"Pennypacker of Penn," 370 

Pennypacker, Peter, 512 

Pennypacker, Samuel, 168 

Pennypacker, Samuel W., appointed a 
member of Philadelphia Board of 
Public Education, 191; appointed 
member of Valley Forge Park Com- 
mission, 254; appointed to Bench of 
Philadelphia Common Pleas Court 
No. 2, 198; as a representative 
Pennsylvanian, 263; becomes presi- 
dent judge of Common Pleas No. 2, 
247; becomes president of Pennsyl- 
vania German Society, 246; becomes 
vice president of Historical Society, 
246; elected president of Pennsyl- 
vania Historical Society, 257; declines 
proffered Supreme Court nomination, 
344; elected to ten-year judicial 
term with practically no opposition, 
202; is defeated for Assembly, 187; 
read six languages, 12; receives honor- 
ary LL.D. from the University of 
Pennsylvania, 346; selected delegate 
to the 1904 National Convention, 
346; sworn in as governor, 276 

Pennypackers Mills visited by Sons of 
Revolution, 253 

Pennypacker's Supreme Court Reports, 
127 

Pennypacker, Washington, 86 

Penrose, Boies, acknowledges receipt of 
poem, 455; asks governor to work 
for 1905 ticket, 452; compared with 
Quay as a politician, 355; excuses 
Durham for apparent neglect of 
duties, 446; writes congratulations 
on handling of coal strike, 424. See 
also 265, 357, 387, 393, 437 

Pepper, Dr. William, 134, 152, 239 

559 



INDEX 



Pepys, author of a book often reprinted, 
15 

Perkasie encampment of First Brigade 
visited, 307 

Perot, T. Morris, 175 

Petition from Philadelphia lawyers 
asking governor not to be a candidate 
for Supreme Court, 335 

Pettit, Silas W., 181 

Pfannebecker, meeting a, in Germany, 
218 

Philadelphia, College of Medicine in- 
vites author's father to a chair on 
faculty, 55; City Institute, 57 

Philadelphia delegation to State Con- 
vention unanimously endorses gov- 
ernor for Supreme Court, 343 

Philadelphia, her "Greatest Need," 
374 

Philippine question discussed with Mr. 
Taft, 472 

Phillips, John J., 55 

Phillips, Thomas W., 183 

Philobiblon Club organized, 239 

Phoenix Iron Company, 72, 90 

Phoenix, Weekly, 86 

PhcEnixville, Annals of, 147; charter, 52; 
conditions during author's boyhood, 
62; war record of her sons, 89; war 
work of girls, 89; Young Men's 
Literary Union, 72 

Phoenixville Guardian, 75 

Phaenixville Pioneer, The, 35 

Physical peculiarities, 149, 150 

Pierie, George G., 234, 431 

Pittsburgh consolidation, 294, 382; con- 
solidation urged, 537; Ripper Bill, 
270 

Piatt, E. Greenough, 126 

Piatt, Senator Thomas C, 344 

Playfair, Sir Lyon, 134 

Plockhoy, Peter Cornelius, 147 

Poe, second edition of poems, 166 

Poetry written by author, 136 

Political, associates of early manhood, 
172; ward struggles, early, 174; 
parades and riots, 184 

Politics in Phoenixville just before war, 
82 

Pollok's "Course of Time" favorite 
book of author's grandmother, 19 

Pollock, James, appointed harbormaster 
of Philadelphia, 428 

Pollock, Moses, 168 

Pollution of streams brought to atten- 
tion of legislature, 542 

Pomeroy, A. Nevin, 292 

Popular election of U. S. Senators, 
279 

Porter, Chas, A., an early political 
associate, 172 

Porter, General Horace, 396 

Portfolio, the, finest known set owned 
by author, 161 

Positions sought by author as a young 
man, 72 

Pratt, Joseph T., 199 

560 



Prentis, Major General Benjamin May- 
berry, 319 

Presentation of silver set at close of 
administration, 438 

Press, controversy with the, 300 ; corre- 
spondent sent out of Mt, Gretna 
camp, 308 

Press comments on judicial capacity of 
author, 203; irresponsible meddling 
of, interferes with justice, 212; 
liberty of the, and its significance, 295 

Price, Eli K., 119 

Price, William T., 183 

Principio visited by author as a boy, 56 

Prisons and their methods, 209 

Probst, Anton, tried for murder, 121 

Program of legislation suggested in 
inaugural address, 282 

Prospects in life at opening of 1902, 261 

Pry or, Roger A.. 92 

Puleston, John Henry, 75 

Punishment inadequate to prevent 
wrong doing, 209 

Pupils associated with author in Grove- 
mont Seminary, 69 

Puzzling a reporter, 146 

Quaker comments on veto policy, 288 
Quarter sessions court, reluctance to 

preside, 200 
Quay, Matthew Stanley, a distant 
relative of author, 195; aids a South- 
ern lady who had befriended him, 
419; appreciation by F. W. Fleitz, 
484; approves of author as judge, 
195; as a host 484; compared with 
Clay, 281; dies, 351; eulogized by 
author before Eighth Ward Repub- 
lican Club, 316; funeral, 354; mem- 
bers of Indian tribe, 483; jokes with 
Ben Sooy, 485 ; Latin humor from, 345 ; 
moves remains of his grandmother 
from Ohio to Chester County, 322; 
political methods characterized, 320; 
resolution adopted by Pennsylvania 
delegation to Chicago 1904 conven- 
tion, 359; statue to be erected at 
capitol, 440; superstitions, 322; talks 
over gubernatorial nomination, 265; 
writes a scathing letter on the Su- 
preme Court muddle, 340 et seq. 

Radcliffe, Sarah Ann, made clothes for 
Pennypacker family, 39 

Rand, Dr. Benjamin Howard, 55 

Railroads to take precautions against 
forest fires, 527 

Rawle, William Brooke, 158, 302 

Rawle, William Henrs-, 114, 197 

Read, John M., 172 

Reading, records of, 145 

Readings in law, 110 

Reapportionment into senatorial and 
representative districts recommended, 
534; difficulties explained, 535; of 
the state proposed in 1905, 370 

Reception of newspaper abuse, 309 



INDEX 



Record as governor, 439 

Record plant offered to the governor, 

374 
Red Bank Revolutionary War battle 

monument dedicated, 431 
Redmond, John E., 366 
Reed, Henry, 176, 186, 187 
Reed, William B., 58, 97 
Reeder, J. Howard, 186 
Reeves, Benjamin, 52; David, 52, 55; 

Col. Paul S., 33 
Reeves, Colonel Paul S., 313 
Reeves & Cornett, 72 
Reeves, Francis B., 186 
Reflections on judicial functions, 206- 

207 
Reform, ideas of author as a young man, 

171; in corporation law urged, 532; 

in State printing, 292; of marriage 

relation suggested, 211 
Registration commissioners, first board 

appointed, 431; laws asked for, 638 
Relatives of author fluent speakers and 

writers, 136 
Relics of author's military experience, 97 
Renshaw, Robert, 172 
Reply of governor to lawyers' Supreme 

Court candidacy letter, 338; to 

Record's "Foul Conspiracy" article, 

326 
Reports of cases in the Philadelphia 

License Court of 1901, 257 
Republican Convention of 1880 
Republican State Convention of 1906 

adopts resolutions of commendation, 

427 
Requisition of criminals, 315 
Residence at 1540 North Fifteenth 

Street began 1875, 174 
Resignation from bench, 268 
Respect due to public officials, 194 
Results of election for governor, 272 
Reviewing a body of troops from a 

carriage, 308 
Rewards of life not secured through 

eagerness, 262 
Reyburn, Mayor, subject of discussion 

with Mr. Taft, 59, 470 
Rhine boat trip, 218 
Rhoades, Henry, 37 
Rice, Charles E., President Judge of the 

Superior Court, 322 
Richardson, Henry Starr, 315 
Richardson, Nathaniel K., 101 
Richardson, Samuel, 21; Ann, 21. 
Riley, James Whitcomb, made doctor of 

laws, 349 
Rittenhouse, David, 147 
Rittersville Homeopathic Hospital for 

Insane, cornerstone laid, 362 
Road improvement, 293, 350 
Roberts, Julia, mxilatto slave of Lane's, 

24 
Roberts, of Montgomery, advocates im- 
proved roads, 294 
Rogers, John I., 101 
Rogers, William B., 273 



36 



Romig, James E., 187 

Roosevelt at capitol dedication, 479; 
at Gettysburg, incidents, 477; char- 
acterized by author, 474; classmate of 
writer's brother at Harvard, 474; 
comments of author on his adminis- 
tration, 481 ; corresponds with author 
in Blaine campaign, 475; described 
as a Jew, 488; entertained at Execu- 
tive mansion, 480; expresses a wish to 
interfere in coming coal strike, 478; 
introduced at Gettysburg, 352; in- 
vited to capitol dedication, 478; last 
President with whom author had 
relations, 15; University Day orator, 
476; visited by author, 328; vice 
presidential nomination suggested by 
author, 475; inauguration, 16 

Root, Senator Elihu, 422, 488 

Rosengarten, Joseph G., 153, 175 ** 

Rothermel, P. F., a rival for judicial 
appointment, 197 

Rothermel, Jr., P. F., 197 

Rowe, L. S., comments on address to 
International Peace Congress, 446 

Royer, Dr. J. Warren, 39 

Rush, Madame, 58 

Russo-Japanese War, comments, 255 

Ryan, Archbishop, urges appropria- 
tion for Catholic protectory, 450 

St. Louis Exposition, commission, 363; 
visited, 364 

Sachse, Julius F., 229 

Sale of part of library, 394 

Salus-Grady newspaper bUl, 295, 299, 
302 

Sampson, Admiral, criticised, 417 

San Salvador noticed and described, 242 

Saunders, Courtland, 98 

Saunders, E. D., founds West Phila- 
delphia Institute, 59 

Savanah experiences and observations, 
400 

Sawtelle, Colonel Charles G., 72 

Scattergood, Henry, 431 

Schaffer, William I., 271 

Schall, Lieut. Col. Edwin, 87 

Schefifer, Dr. J. G. De Hoop, 150, 216 

Schenten family genealogy investigated, 
217 

Scherer, C. Louis, 145 

Schley, Admiral, meets governor, 417 

Schomberg, Emily, 99 

School, recollections of author's first, 33 

School sentiment of boys on war ques- 
tions, 80 

Schroeder, Lib, 33 

Schwab, Charles M., 367 

Schwenkfelder literature owned by 
author, 161-163 

Scotch-Irish ancestry of author, 17 

Scott, General Winfield, 92 

Scott, John, Jr., tells anecdote about 
M. S. Quay, 438 

Scripture verses, learned by author for 
reward as a boy, 40 

561 



INDEX 



Sea sickness, 224 

Second term election not contested, 254 

Seidensticker, Dr. Oswald, 144 

Sellers, David, 197 

'Settlement of Germantown" pub- 
lished, 229 

Seventh Pennsylvania regiment at- 
tacked in Baltimore, 86 

Seventh Pennsylvania Reserves' monu- 
ment at Antietam, 437 

Seventy-third Pennsylvania regiment 
memorial dedicated at Chickamauga, 
316 

Seward, William H., writes to author's 
father, 51 

Shackleton, Sir Ernest, met in company 
with other polar explorers, 496 

Shapley, Rufus E., 251 

Sharswood, Judge George, 113 

Shaud, David, convicted of murder, 
asks for speedy execution, 334 

Sheppard, Isaac A., 202 

Sheppard, Fiank K., 101 

Sheppard, Furman, esteemed as an 
able man, 121 

Sheridan, General, 134 

Sheriff's request not a prerequisite to 
gubernatorial action, 422 

Sherman, General 15 

Sherman, John, one of the author's 
teachers, 44 

Shiffler Hose Company, 56 

Shiloh battlefield visited, 319 

Shipley, Samuel R., 125 

Shippen, Edward, 245 

Shoddy clothing complaints, 87 

Shriners of Harrisburg entertain gover- 
nor, 417 

Shumaker, James M., rescues imperiled 
people, 348 

Sickles, Gen. Daniel E., 15 

Silver set, presentation of, 438 

Silver, W. A., 101 

Simes, Snyder B., schoolmate of author 
in Philadelphia, 58 

Simons, Menno, author settles question 
of date of birth, 165 

Simpson, W. Alexander, 253, 339 

Singer, Captain, 103 

Slam-bang case, 241 

Slemmer, Lieut. A. J., 149 

Slight incidents and great conse- 
quences, 159 

Sloanaker, A. B., becomes politically 
prominent by means of wax flowers, 
104 

Small, Col. Wm. P., gets a reputation 
as hero, 83 

Smith, A. E., 172 

Smith, Charles Emory, 185, 264, 272, 
297, 301, 434 

Smith, Dr. William, founder of the 
Univeisity, 162 

Smith, Walter George, 415 

Smith, William B., 184 

Smithers, Elias P., 78 

Social evil through eyes of judge, 210 

562 



Social occasions at the old "Bellevue," 
233 

Soldiers' Home at Erie visited, 313 

Somerset encampment of Second Brig- 
ade inspected, 307 

Sower imprint collection, 160 

Sower, Samuel, had boyish quarrel with 
author, 68 

Spanish language studied, 145 

Special session of legislature called, 
398; considered, 389; corrupt prac- 
tices act passes, 412; creates greater 
Pittsburgh, 412; proposed legisla- 
tion, 398; reapportionment passes, 
412; resolution of thanks and con- 
gratulations, 412 

Spencer, John Thompson, 113 

Sprogell, Lodowick Christian, became a 
Dutch patroon in Pennsylvania, 17 

Sproul, William C, advocate of im- 
proved roads, 293; on governor's re- 
tirement, 460 

Staake, William H., 415 

State engineer, 534 

State Library achievements, 627; rec- 
ommendations, 527 

Stearns, John O., 204 

Steel, Edward T., 185, 191 

Steelton railway accident, 384 

Sternberg, Ambassador, on Trautwin 
murder case, 449 

Stevens, Thaddeus, a correspondent of 
author's father, 54, 136 

Stewart, Adjutant General, 362 

Stewart, Judge John, 183, 385, 451 

Stewart, Gen. Thomas J., 304 

Still6, Dr. Charles, president of Histori- 
cal Society, 156 

Stockton, Rear Admiial, 90 

Stokes, Governor E. C, 431 

Stone, Frederick D., 134, 157 

Stone, Governor William A., 254, 350 

Stony Point, author made an address, 15 

Stotesbury, Edward T., 495 

Stove plate cast by a Pennypacker in 
1787 discovered, 366 

Stream conservation brought to atten- 
tion of legislature, 537 

Stuart, Edwin S., estimate, 432; in- 
augurated governor, 438; nominated 
for governor, 427 

Sullivan, Andrew J., 44 

Sullivan, Mark, writes a poem on 
"Samuel Whangdoodle Pennypack- 
er," 425; writes "The Ills of Pennsyl- 
vania," 260 

Sulzberger, Mayer, 181, 194, 241, 323, 
452 

Sulzer, Governor William, 280 

Sumter, awakening effect in North, 84 

Supplementary call for special session, 
406 

Supreme Court of U. S., admitted to 
practice before, 135 

Surface, H. A., 272 

Susquehanna river scenery, 347 

Swedes, ancestry of author, 17 



INDEX 



Sweeney, Colonel Frank G., 307 
Sword, John, a fellow law student, 109 
System of approving financial bills, 292 

Taft, Wm. H., conversation with gov- 
ernor, 469 et seq. ; dines with Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania' Alumni, 469 

Talbot, Bishop Ethelbert, on governor's 
Thanksgiving proclamation, 459 

Taney, Roger B., 80 

Taylor, Annie M., 69 

Taylor, Bayard, aided by author's 
father starts paper, Phoenixville 
Pioneer, 35; corresponded with auth- 
or, 15; member of N. Y. Tribune 
staff writes to author's father, 53; 
playmate of author, 34 

Taylor, Col. Charles Frederick, 102 

Taylor, Enoch, 78 

Teaching experience of author, 76 

Temperance pledge, signed by author 
twenty times as a boy, 43 

Tener, Governor John K., 246 „ 

Text of proposed act further restrict- 
ing newspapers, 543 

Third Pennsylvania Reserves' monu- 
ment at Antietam, 437 

Thompson, Jonah V., seeks governor- 
ship in vain, 262 

Thompson, Joseph Whitaker, 128 

Thompson, Mrs. Jonah V., entertains 
governor and Senator Penrose, 388 

Thompson, Samuel Gustine, 195 

Thompson, Samuel G., 195; appointed 
to Supreme Court, 323 ; suspected by 
newspapers of being a chairwarmer, 
325 

Thomson, J. A., one of author's school 
teachers, 62 

Thomson, John. 239 

Tindle, James R., 384 

Todd, Henry, 184 

Todd, M. Hampton, 184, 416 

"Tom Thumb" visits author's father, 
49 

Tory connections of first American 
Whitaker, 27 

Tower of London visited, 225 

Townsend, Joseph B., 133 

Trexler, Col. Henry C, 312 

Truitt, Robert, 57 

Truman, George, 184 

Trust companies request to do insur- 
ance business recommended for study, 
534 

Trustee of University of Pennsylvania, 
151 

"Truth Exalted" picked up cheaply, 
165 

Tunnel Hill, how village grew, 44; 
location of a candy store, 41 

Twain, Mark, 148 

Twitchell, Geo. S., tried for murder, 122 

Tyson, Dr. James L., 55, 218 

Umstat, Eva, wife of Hendrick Panne- 
becker, 17 



Underground Railway station near 
Phoenixville, 80 

Union League of Philadelphia, its 
critics, 97; founders' day dinner, 324 

Union sympathies of Maryland Whit- 
akers, 86 

University Day speaker, 349 

University of Pennsylvania, trustee of, 
151; date of founding established, 
152; graduation at Law School of, 
114; funds secured, 151; presided 
over by author, 15; receives direct 
appropriation, 293 

Updegrove, Sarah, married to Joseph 
Whitaker the elder, 28 

Utrecht, place of martyrdom of mem- 
bers of family in 1568, 17 

Valley Forge Commission report, 629; 
map discovered in Amsterdam, 158; 
Park Commission activities, 254; 
Park first urged by author's father, 51 

Van Bebber, Matthias, employed Hen- 
drick Pannebecker as attorney, 17 

Vanderslice, Kate, 89 

Vardaman, Governor, as an orator, 418 

Vaux, Richard, 97 

Verses commenting on governor's 
message to special session, 409; 
scribbled in license court, 258; 
written to entertain fellow voyagers, 
214 

Veto policy of governor, 288 

Vicksburg battlefield memorial dedi- 
cated, 418 

Visit to Washington to seek West 
Point cadetship, 91 

Visitors at capitol dedication, 435 

Vivisection condemned, 237 

Volunteer fire companies of Philadel- 
phia, 56 

Von Moschzisker, Robert, 310 

Von Ossing, Caspar Schwenkfeld, 163 

Voyage from Southampton, 251 

Wagner, George M., 144 

Wagner, General Louis, 493 

Wagner, Samuel, 108 

Wagon load of corn incident, 411 

Waite, Chief Justice Morrison R., 133 

Walker, Dr., 83 

Walking trip by author and cousin, 73 

Wallace, John William, president of 
Historical Society, 113, 156 

Walton, Charles M., 108 

Walton, Henry F., 344 

Wanger, I. P., entertains J. G. Cannon, 
468 

War of 1812 loan to U. S. by Pennsyl- 
vania repaid, 421 

War of Rebellion, the proper narne for 
the war, 15; boyhood associates in, 98 

Warren, B. H. ("Birdie"), character- 
ized, 303 

Warwick Castle visited, 226 

Washington's letter dated from Penny- 
packer's Mills anecdote, 168 

563 



INDEX 



Watres, Louis A., a dark horse, 267 
Watson, annalist of Philadelphia, corre- 
spondent of author's father, 54 
Watson, David T., 276, 323, 405 
Watterson, Henry, lectures in Academy 

of Music, 245 
Wayne, Anthony, 20; statue at Valley 

Forge, 158, 384; erection of a monu- 
ment recommended, 530 
Wayne, William 158, 239 
Weaver, Dr., appointed surgeon general, 

311 
Weaver, John, as mayor of Philadelphia, 

382 
Webster, Daniel, 23, 48, 49, 84 
Weedon, General George, his Orderly 

Book published, 268 
"Weekly Notes of Cases," 127 
Weekly Phoenix, 86 
Weimer, Albert B., 127 
Welsh ancestry of author, 17 
Welsh, John 151 
Wernwag, Lewis, builder of house in 

which author was born, 31 
West art collected by author, 161 
Westminster Abbey visited, 225 
Wetzel Swamp excursion 290 
Wharton, Bromley, chosen private 

secretary, 283 
Wharton, George M., 119 
Wharton, Henry, 119 
Wheeler, Charles, 175 
Whitaker ancestry of author, 27 
Whitaker, Anna Maria, author's 

mother, 23 
Whitaker, George W., 72 
Whitaker, Gertrude K., 49; Edmund 

L., 55; George P., 55; Nelson E., 55; 

George W., 60; William P. C, 64; 

Benjamin R., 69; Andrew R., 69 
Whitaker, Joseph, author's maternal 

grandfather, 25; nail factory at 

Fourth Street and Old York Road, 

26; executor of, 246 
Whitaker, Joseph R., 85, 246 
Whitaker, Bishop O. W., 215 
Whitaker, Dr. Samuel, A., 71 
Whitaker & Coudon, 76 
White, Ferguson & Co. of Robesonia, 76 
White, Josiah, 73, 89 
Whitehead, Miss Mary, 97 
Whitman, Walt, as a realist poet 

characterized, 498; entertained by 

Penn Club, 497 



'Wide Awakes," 83 

Wiley, Brigadier General John A., 
378 

Willard, Dr. De Forrest, 113 

Williamson, Stanley, 128 

Wilson, James, 167 

Wilson, J. Lapsley, 175 

Wilson, William L., 123 

Wilson, Woodrow, address at Congress 
Hall characterized, 495; character- 
ized, 494; compared with Sulzer and, 
Zangwell, 494; civil service reform, 
180; compared with author as gov- 
ernor, 326; present at opening of 
restored Congress Hall, 245 

Wiltbank, William White, 118, 247 

Winnemore, George W., 120 

Wise, John Sergeant, 133 

Wistar, I. J., writes letter of thanks. 
441 

Wistar parties attended by author's 
father, 57 

Wister, W. Wynne, 127 

Wister, William Rotch, 175, 185 

Wolfe, Charles, S., 185, 229 

Wood, Edward R., 176, 185 

Wood, Stuart, 176 

Woodford, Stewart L., 177 

Woodruff, Clinton Rogers, 431 

Woods, Cyrus E., commends adminis- 
tration, 463 

Woods, Joseph M., 321 

Woodward, Byron, 113 

Workman, J. Henry, 98 

Workman, James Henry, 55 

Wright, Richardson L., 193 

Wu Ting Fang, at dedication of Uni- 
versity Law Building, 486 

Xanthippe, poem written by request in 
early life, 137 

Yates, Richard, Governor of Illinois, 91 
Yellow Journalism compared with 

English common law offense of 

scolding, 541; leads to lawlessness, 

541; severely scored, 539 
Young Men's Literary Union of 

Phcenixville, 72 
Yumuri observations and experiences, 

244 

Zaandam sights, 216 
Zimmerman, Colonel T. C, 229 



564 



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